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Question

Need help with small business network

Dec 7, 2016 10:03AM PST

I'm with a small business that works in e-commerce. My ISP is Metronet. When they added their services they did not provide a modem. I guess our small belkin home router acts as the modem as it has a static IP and is the hub for all network activity. We have two separate buildings just a hundred feet apart. In the primary building we have 4 computers hard wired, and then a wireless printer an ipad and 2-4 phones connected at once. we then have a hard wire connection to an access point (very beefy machine that should cause no issues) located on the exterior wall on the peak of the roof, of the main building. This access point then provides network access over to the adjacent building I described. The connecting point here is network extender (this is another home network piece of equipment). This extender has 2 hard wires going to computers as well as wireless access for an ipad and 2-4 phones as well. The way we have it setup is clearly not working as we are constantly having trouble with the network going down in one building and sometimes both. What I would like to find out is: What is the causing it to go down.
And of course how do I fix it (whether it be redoing what we have or buying new equipment.)

Discussion is locked

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Answer
I'm going with
Dec 7, 2016 10:31AM PST

You would put this out to bid and then look over their proposals.

The killer item to me were those phones. WiFi isn't reliable enough to host all you noted so they should push back on that aspect.

If I read your post a second time you are asking why it goes down. That would be WiFi links. WiFi is an open standard that can be easily brought down with well, the internet is full of the reasons why so I no longer list them. WHAT you need is a non-WiFi link that is proprietary and not subject to such interference. These are sold by networking companies that include site inspection and more.

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Answer
Network troubleshooting, the right way
Dec 7, 2016 11:10PM PST

With many networking issues, the best way is to go through a process of elimination. You need to find out what it is that's going down, and when. From your information, everything seems to go down, but sometimes not all at once. Either it all goes down, or one building goes down. There's some missing information. It also sounds like there might be more than 1 problem in the chain.

Some questions to ask yourself:

- Does it ever go down in the main building where the modem/router gateway is, but not in the adjacent building?

- When it does go down, is it both wired and wireless that stops working, or just wi-fi? No sense in trying to fix wireless issues when wired is also down, looking at the wrong place.

- When it goes down, if wired is down, did you verify the modem, lights, run a bypassed test? A bypass test is when you connect a computer, laptop wired directly to the modem, is it working? If so, but when you connect back to the network it doesn't something is wrong past the modem...

I highly suggest you keep a log, and figure out what's going down and when. And run a process of elimination by backing up into your network. Like I just explained, testing stuff by bypassing parts of the network will help you find where the issues exist.

Next, let's touch base on your hardware, that ISP gateway (modem and router in one)... you need to do your best to get rid of that junk, its possible the router portion is unable to handle this load and causing all types of problems. Ask your ISP for a dedicated modem, or buy one yourself.

From there you need to look into a quality router for the first building, and possibly do the same for the second. The beefy device you speak of that remains outside and serves as a bridge, I have no idea what it is so I can't help you there. Only time it should be of concern, is if you have service in the first building, and not the second.

The RJ cable you used to run to the next building, I assume it's the shielded outdoor grade one. 100 feet sounds like an ok distance without signal being disturbed so that should not be the problem.

As far as Wi-Fi goes, you can only start testing and fixing that, if you ONLY have Wi-Fi issues. So if all wired connections work fine, good ping good speeds, and your Wi-Fi sucks and drops, than there's a ton more info I can help with.. but for now I will leave it at this, if you have questions feel free to ask away.