A Guide to Setting Up a Network for Businesses

Your business relies heavily on the people you have hired to handle the work. Conventionally, running a business implies establishing an office space from which all your employees operate. This office space necessitates setting up a network that allows your staff to collaborate.

Helping ventures such as yours is why Altek has decided to develop a small business guide to setting up a network for your office space. The following tips are crucial for efficiently installing your network and related equipment. At Altek, we know because that’s precisely what we’ve been doing for three decades and counting. 

Steps to Setting Up a Network

Your business cannot operate independently of the information necessary to run it. Even then, it would be best if you had different departments to coordinate and collaborate for specific outcomes to be possible. Here is a look at the steps necessary to set up a successful network.

1. Consider Your Office Floor Plan

Before setting up a network, you must consider the floor plan your firm has adopted. Have you set up cubicles in the center of the room, or have you gone with another plan? The layout of your office influences whether you should install network cabling, and if so, where to install it. 

Despite the possibility of setting up a wireless network as it is more convenient, your employees will enjoy an enhanced performance from the network via hard-wire connections. Again, your office floor plan chiefly determines this. 

If you have a more liberal style where locations are not fixed, a wireless network can enable employee support in moving around. However, the most compelling office hardware needs to be hard-wired. 

2. Review the Internet Provider

Whenever you come across marketing materials from internet service providers in Telford, PA, they include crazy speeds to excite their target clients. However, it would help if you looked into it a little deeper. Most ISPs quote the download speeds, but nothing about upload speeds.

Your employees are not generally downloading stuff, but rather, they are creating and uploading documents to a central location. For this reason alone, you need to look at an ISP that has superb upload speeds. These speeds are essential if you consider using cloud technology services such as storage, computing, or document processing. 

Sufficient upload speeds upon setting up a network denote no bottlenecks in communication and document sharing. Thus, no tie-ups or backlogs with time-sensitive work. 

3. Assess Your Electricity Outlets and Ethernet Ports

To create an office network in Telford, PA, consider your current needs and plan effectively for them. Your tactics greatly inform what network infrastructure you will build and the equipment to support it.

The first place to begin is with electricity sockets and ethernet ports. How many you require depends on the number of employees you are looking to support and the devices that will be part of the network. 

The power outlets should be plentiful for all the computers and monitors your workers need. If you don’t have a central printer room, you may want to think of the printers, scanners, and other peripherals they need to get their work done. 

4. Weigh Up Scalability

Despite starting as a small business in Telford, PA, you don’t see yourself remaining at the same level in five years, do you? With your company’s growth in mind, you want your ethernet port and electricity sockets to outnumber those already in use. 

It’s going to be more costly to start with many ethernet ports. Still, you will save yourself significant headaches in the future when figuring out how to accommodate new additions to your team. Also, envision the product life cycle before committing to a purchase. 

The performance of the switch you settle for is crucial to the operations of your office. A faster switch with numerous ethernet ports will cost more. However, your operations will benefit a lot from these capabilities. 

You also need to understand that every office is unique, and as such, no two solutions are equal. What determines your network setup is how you pair your chosen network equipment to your needs. 

Need Help Setting Up an Office Network in Telford, PA?

Then look no further than Altek. For over 30 years, we have been successfully helping businesses achieve their goals through our managed IT, document management, and printing solution services. Get in touch with us for a sales consultation.