Surely there's better than NAT or ICS??? Need REAL Internet!

[Macaw]

So I have office space and everyone connected to a 3COM Superstack III switch. Now we need Internet.

Right now I hooked a W2K machines up to the switch and installed DHCP and NAT to give folks Internet from a measly ISDN connection. Not good enough. We want a T1 or better but I want to be able to do things like Netmeeting and not worry about NAT crapola that makes some of those apps not work. What do people do for REAL UNMOLESTED Internet?

I hear I need to buy a Cisco router or some such thing. Any pointers on where I can educate myself about this stuff?

 

[TheViper6]

www.cisco.com

call your service proider too, they should be able to get you some info

if you have a small office, check the Cisco 1720 with a built in CSU.

 

[jmcoreymv]

Well bandwidth problems aside, you need public IPs for all your computers if you dont want to use NAT.

 

[BCYL]

I agree with jmcoreymv.... if you dont want ANY problems at all, you will need public IPs for every PC in your office... even if you go with a router, you will probably run into some NAT problems down the road if not properly configured...

Any NAT solution, whether it's a router or a linux box, won't give you any trouble if properly configured...

 

[Macaw]

Ok I did some research on Cisco and it looks like the 3600 series is what I will need. It's a small office now with only 8 employees but we are going to 50 within a few months so I would like to get set up early.

One thing we will do a lot of is video conferencing so whatever router we use will need to support the H.323 protocol that Netmeeting and others use. It looks like Cisco has some support for this http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/pd/iosw/ioft/mmcm/tech/h323_wp.htm ... but I'm trying to figure out if our software router solution (w2k server) can do this as well.

Linux isn't going to be available to us because of our technology partner.

 

[Xanathar]

I would double check your research, for a simple T1, or even 2 a 2600 (2610 or 2611) can easily suffice and be over a thousand cheaper, and will still scale. BUT talk to who you plan on buying your bandwith from, a lot of companues will provide the router and setup, or offer you a cheap lease on a router also.

Worry about the service before the hardware.

 

[TungFree]

I have some input, a barricade router has quite a few featurs like printer sharing and file sharing. and it can on a single IP from a cable company create up tp 253 or so vertual IP addresses that can put that many ppl on the Internet. Since u have a switch u can have sub meetings of selected ppl or all or any 2 or more of your office workers. Cisco has a fine rep for routers but the price is steep too a Barricade may do you I am not familliar with a cisco improvement my barricade came with 4 switched ports a crinter port and a choice of either a cable modem/dsl or a serial 9 pin connection that may work on a 65k line too. my 4 computers seem to run at speeds limited only by hard drives since my newer 66 and 33 mhz hard drives comuters run faster than the 2 with the old slower IDE drives.

Hope that helps

TungFree

 

[Macaw]

Xanathar,

What is the basic difference between the 3600 and 2600 series? I could dig thru www.cisco.com but much of their language doesn't make sense to me. I know that I need H.323 protocol for Netmeeting which requires a special OS image on the Cisco router or some such thing.

Also, I don't want to slight this forum, but it seems aimed at small office and home use. Is there another forum you use for discussing big networks?

Cheers,
Macaw

 

[spidey07]

difference between 2600 and 3600 series is processor/memory capacity/number&types of interfaces the router can support.

for a t1 or two a 2620 is perfect. You still need a firewall and the pix can't be beat. Never heard of the NAT crapola of which you speak.

Cisco PIX + 2620 = real internet

tech goodies

 

[fivepesos]

IF you want to rid yourself of Network Address Translation, each machine will need a public IP address. You ISP should lease u blocks of IP space for a fairly reasonable price. if you dont plan to upgrade above a t1 even a 1600 will do this for u. most 1600s have a wan slot and u could put an isdn module in their until your t1 is installed (but i believe youd have to still do NAT with ISDN).

judging by your knowledge of cisco equipment, hire a consultant. theyll help u and a have a very thorough understand of what will work for your network. a local cisco service rep could do the same thing for you.

i think its funny you think a 50 person office is a big network. some of the people who frequent this forum handle "just a little" more traffice than a 50 person network.

 

[fivepesos]

if you decide to give each machine its own public ip address, be very careful. each machine can just as easily be connected to from the outside as they can connect out. since many firewall impelemtations (i havent used cisco's PIX, only linux, win2k, and motorolla) use NAT youll have to do packet filtering to try and limit attacks against your network. unless you have a very thorough understanding of security, i would DEFINITELY hire a consultant for this.

im somewhat unclear by what u said about linux. your "technology partner"? unless youre dealing with microsoft and have a political reason for not using linux, you can use linux to do routing as easily as a cisco router.

 

[spidey07]

Good call on the "get a local rep to help" recommendation fivepesos

Sounds good to me as this request is against the accepted security policies of most companies, hence my recommendation for some kind of firewall.

spidey.

ps - does checkpoint offer a port for linux...if so I'd love to try at home (hopefully for free on a trial basis, wink)