Put the pedal to the metal: Accelerate your office's productivity with a computer network

Do you need a computer network? What might you gain from it? Would it be worth the expense and downtime required for installation? What kind of network is appropriate for your office? Last year, CAMEO considered these questions and then decided to take the network plunge. In this article we share our experience as new network users, and offer some resources to help you find your own answers to these important questions.

"Networks can help nonprofits share information, efficiently access the Internet, and work collaboratively. As networks become more pervasive, it is important for you to know which technologies will work for your organization and which won't."
—www.techsoup.org

What is a computer network?
www.techsoup.org offers this straightforward definition: "In the simplest terms, a network consists of two or more computers that are connected together to share information. All networking, no matter how complex, builds off this simple system."

What can you do with it?
You can greatly increase the productivity of your office. When we networked CAMEO's computers last year, we dramatically increased our efficiency. Here's what we do with our simple network:

Share files
We share information by accessing one another's files through the network. We no longer have to ask each other to transfer files back and forth on floppy disks or other storage media, email them to each other, or print them out to pass around. It's a real time-saver.

A cautionary note: You have to know where to find that file you want in someone else's computer, or you'll waste time poking around looking for it. Your office will have to set some file- and folder-naming rules to keep this kind of searching to a minimum. And you'll have to develop some discipline about tracking files in your own computer-it won't be just your computer anymore.

Share printers
We have two printers in the CAMEO office: a black-and-white laser and a color inkjet. We all have access to both of them through the network. If we have a print job with a lot of pages - if speed matters and color doesn't - we choose the laser printer. If color is important, we choose the inkjet. Inkjet printers are more expensive to run, so having this flexibility saves money too.

Share an Internet connection
We all simultaneously access a high-speed DSL Internet connection through the network. This is undoubtedly the single largest efficiency we have gained. Email communication and Internet research can be done very quickly now. Our "before picture" was not pretty: we had three computers sharing one dial-up connection. We each had long waits to get our turn on the Internet, and suffered the attendant disruption of workflow (not to mention the annoyance factor). Now all of our machines are online, all the time. What a relief!

Back up data
We back up all of our documents, our accounting system, and our database at least weekly, onto CD-ROM and/or Zip disks. The network speeds up this process, too. Since we can all access each other's files, one person can back up the entire office's data from one location, in one operation.

How painful is it?
As with other aspects of office technology, it's a beautiful thing when it works-then there's the rest of the time. We got off to a rocky start when we hired a company to connect just two computers. It took hours to get the computers to connect; a few short weeks later the network failed and could not be repaired.

Our second try, using a different company and connecting all three computers, was a pretty pain-free experience. All the machines got along fine together right away. This new network has crashed just once, and we can hardly blame it-a virus that came in on an email attachment attacked it with a vengeance. This was some months ago. We had the damage repaired, and now we exist in that blissful state where we don't really think about the network much at all. We just use it.

What type of network? Peer-to-peer vs. Client-server networks
Peer-to-peer networks are simpler than client-server networks. In a peer-to-peer system, all of the computers are connected together as equals. There is no ultimate "authority."

A client-server system requires an additional computer, called a server, that does nothing but manage the network. The server's "clients" are all the individual workstations in the office. The server provides the authority lacking in peer-to-peer networking, managing files and printers, directing traffic, and providing backup functions.

In researching this topic we found this general rule of thumb: if you have fewer than ten workstations you can probably get by with a peer-to-peer system (this is what CAMEO has). However, our network consultant suggests that with as few as 4 or 5 workstations, stability can begin to suffer, and with no server to act as traffic cop, you start to lose track of files.

Setting up a peer-to-peer network
You need a knowledgeable person to do this work. That person could be sitting in your own office, or you might be tech-savvy enough to do it yourself with a little guidance. Or you might choose to outsource as we did. The process itself is fairly simple: network cards are installed in all of the machines, cables are run between them (there's a certain amount of crawling around on the floor involved), and the computers are told where to find each other by assigning and configuring "addresses" for each machine.

Taking the next step
If you've read any previous articles in the Building Capacity Through Technology series, you know that we always suggest a visit to www.techsoup.org. We're big fans. They know their technology and they know the nonprofit world. Visit their home page and click on Computer Networks. You'll find a wonderful series of articles called Networks 101.

To move from the research stage into action, talk with friends and colleagues in your community to find the best local resources for getting the job done. Follow these leads to find a good IT consultant who can advise you, or who can do the work for you. It's possible that your neighbor's 15-year-old already knows how to set up a network. But be cautious; experience counts in this field.

Cracking the code—networking and beyond
Perhaps the biggest barrier to understanding technology is that it has its own very extensive vocabulary. For sheer number of acronyms, it rivals even the nonprofit world! A great Website to visit to help you crack "tech-speak" is Webopedia.com, a site that bills itself as "the #1 online encyclopedia dedicated to computer technology."

Your network consultant-to-be may hit you with terms like LAN, NIC, or TCP/IP. She should be willing and able to explain these terms in as much depth as you require, but Webopedia provides a good double-check. And you can orient yourself to some of the terminology in advance if you like.

Visit Techsoup and Webopedia and add them to your "bookmark" or "favorites list." You'll have instant access to essential networking information.

Resources:
www.techsoup.org
www.webopedia.com

What to look for when you outsource network installation
CAMEO's first networking experience was painful. The bottom line: we hired the wrong company to do the job. For this article we asked Chris Roberts, who installed the reliable network we now enjoy, what questions we should have asked when we started looking for a consultant to do this work. Here are his recommended questions, with the answers an experienced company should be able to provide:

How many networks do you work with in an average week or month? Look for anywhere from 5-10 a month up.

How long have you been installing and troubleshooting networks? Look for 5 or more years in the field. "It's nice to have someone who started doing this work when things weren't so easy. When something goes wrong, they'll have a better idea of how to fix it."

What type of customers do you work with: home, business, or a mix? Look for emphasis on business, or at least a mix. "Home users are just not going to run into the same problems companies will."
—Chris Roberts runs C & E Computers in South San Francisco. He can be reached at 650-737-9529.