Hey networking KITAs

[G+_Robert Hafer]

Hey networking KITAs,

I’m considering buying a small office building and renting out individual offices, with shared services like internet. (As opposed to renting from someone else and finding another investment)

Do anyone have a recommendation for a small enterprise router that could create many a dozen secure separate networks in the building?

[G+_Black Merc]

How many (sub)offices are you expecting?

 

Mho(for what it's worth), roll-your-own... A dedicated PC built specifically for the traffic and the rules needed for each 'office', including keeping them separate(isolation).

[G+_Mike Lambert]

You might want to look into Ubiquiti for your wired and wifi needs for small building. As long as you have a basic understanding of how networks operate, you can do quite a bit with there toolset.

 

There is a lot on Youtube to help you understand their different product offerings. In particular, I have been enjoying the Crosstalk Solutions channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVS6ejD9NLZvjsvhcbiDzjw)

 

A lot will depend on your target market. Are you doing a shared workspace where individuals and small groups can work, were you might want to do all wifi, or are you planning to divide it up sections for other firms to use as their private office space, where perhaps wired would work better.

 

I just recently bought the ER-X router and have been playing with it. I found this helpful tutorial to guide the setup of a simple network. https://www.grc.com/sn/files/ubiquiti_home_network.pdf

youtube.com - Crosstalk Solutions

[G+_Paul Hutchinson]

Since you will be networking tech support for the other businesses who rent from you, and you are asking for what is very basic advise here, I suggest you find a local tech. Set things up with the local tech who can recommend the equipment/configuration and be your backup tech support. Then when things go badly wrong and your tenants are screaming about suing for lost business and refusing to pay their rent do to a network failure you have a person to call who will know the system and get you back going fast and cheap.

[G+_Marco van Laerhoven]

+Paul Hutchinson

Totally agree on this approach; I have Ubiquiti gear myself and it surely will support small office needs - but regardless how fun it is to setup and experiment with this, I'm sure the fun will die soon when your customers need instant fixes.

 

I would select a tech professional who can support Ubiquiti gear. The UNMS setup allows them to remotely monitor and manage the devices (including firmware updates and backup/restore of device setup) so after initial seup they don't need to be on site for most of the work.

 

If you really like doing this yourself, I recommend setting up a lab to support your training and allows you to try intended changes before you deploy them in the live environment. The price level of Ubiquiti supports that approach in my view.

[G+_Scott Snodgrass]

Unless you need completely separate networks, you're probably best off creating vlans for each "office". Then completely segregate them from each other. I would usually suggest Unifi, but not sure how well they handle SVI.

[G+_Brent Vrieze]

For enterprise grade firewall and separation of network traffic on a budget I still recommend the pfsense open source software.

[G+_George Fromtulsa]

Perhaps these folks will share how they do it. Probably as suggested above with Pro IT help.

36degreesnorth.co - 36°N

[G+_John Sullivan]

Rent out Offices, yes, but why would you want the headaches of IT support, especially if you have to hire another person to handle all the small stuff.

Let your renters find their own Internet provider.

[G+_Travis Hershberger]

Any router that has VLAN capability will be able to separate the networks with little problem. The issue you're going to face is in QOS, and how much throughput the router can handle with QOS turned on.

 

I know the numbers for much of the Edgerouter line of the top of my head anymore, so I'll use them as examples. These are all with QOS enabled. Without QOS, they'll all forward at the full speed of the port. ER-X will only push 60mbps. ER-POE/ER-X-SFP/ERLite all generally get up to 150mbps. I haven't gotten an ER-4 or ER-6p to test with yet, but they should be able to get over 200mbps easily.

 

If the shared connection is even faster than that 200mbps number, then you're into much harder decisions on weather it's better to build your own router or spend the $10,000+ it takes for a Palo Alto or Cisco that can handle QOS at those speeds.

[G+_Travis Hershberger]

I'll also mention that I could build a perfectly ample server with full factory warranty from Xbyte.com or stikc.com that could do 10gb for under $1000.00

xbyte.com - Home page

[G+_Marco van Laerhoven]

Travis Hershberger I think these numbers are on the safe side. I have an edgerouter X sfp at the moment and with speedtest it reaches 195 Mbps.

Not bad for a 50 USD device!

[G+_Robert Hafer]

I’m starting to wonder about how much effort I’ll have to put in. This is supposed to be semi-retirement after being chained to a business 6 days a week.

I’m planning on a janitorial Service because I don’t want to scrub toilets and change light bulbs anymore; maybe installing wiring and letting tenants make their own ISP deals would be easier.

[G+_George Fromtulsa]

Robert Hafer Could be worse than awkward if a tenant uses your ISP account for illegal activity.

 

Based on personal experience, and observing others, being a landlord is not relaxing. Buy REIT shares for real estate income. Then you only have to worry about flushing your investment down the toilet, not about toilets -

[G+_Travis Hershberger]

Marco van Laerhoven Are you using QOS at all? Once you put in QOS settings for specific things like VOIP protocols you use is when the speed really takes a hit.

[G+_Travis Hershberger]

Robert Hafer The networking side would be a set it and forget it at least. So just because it would be a complex installation, ongoing maintenance should be easy.

[G+_Robert Hafer]

Travis Hershberger Set and Forget is what I’m after. I have a second hand 3D printer and a brand new soldering station wait for retirement

[G+_Marco van Laerhoven]

Travis Hershberger

I tried briefly using the smart queue settings - it set aside almost half of the available bandwidth so my conclusion was it was probably not intended for this kind of bandwidth. I think it is overkill to reduce the available bandwidth by such an amount : without QOS I never had issues where my VOIP traffic is interrupted by other traffic, nor for my IPTV streams - I have two HDTV receivers - so I think for now I'm OK without QoS.