BSIT220-T301 Network Management & Infrastructure

 When choosing a router to implement into a home office or just for your home network, there are quite a few things to consider. This can sometimes be an overwhelming task and hopefully this will help guide the process. When choosing a router, you want to consider the purpose of the router, is it for a home office, an office building, just your home and connected devices or are you going to be streaming games/shows constantly. After you know the purpose, the next thing you want to consider is how big of an area you need to cover, follow by what potential security measures you need, such as parental controls and being able to limit access to certain websites. Finally, consider how much you are willing to pay, routers come in large ranges for prices but you can always likely find one in your budget. 

 Ethernet has been around for around 50 years, and over the last 50 years there have been plenty of developments, from being able to transfer data at a maximum speed of 10 megabits per second to now being able to do up to 25 Gigabits per second, or even 40 Gbps if the network is small enough. Ethernet can travel up to 100 meters per network and because of that it becomes a crucial point to consider when setting up a room with your servers and network. Additional things to consider are humidity, cooling capabilities, power and access. Humidity and cooling can go hand in hand without placing the room by any bodies of water or where water may be stored. Power is important because if you keep the network on the same power supply as the rest of your building you run into issues if the power short circuits in the rest of the building. Finally, access, if you don’t want unauthorized people walking in, consider locks or placing the room near someone who will be consistently near the room...

 There are multiple tools that can be used to properly set up cables for building a network. You need to be able to cut the wires, strip the insulation off the wires and then finally crimp the wires. Additionally, if you are building RJ-45 cables, you need to crimp the wires inside of the RJ-45 connectors. For each step there is a different tool and some tools that are all-in-one. Wire cutters are designed to be able to cut through the wire at the desired length, and wire strippers will remove the insulation without damaging the wire inside. Finally, a crimping tool will allow you to crimp the wire inside of an RJ-45 connector once you have the wires in the desired order, T-568A or T-568B. If the order is wrong, the wire won’t work correctly and you’ll know its correct because the wire will work.

 Hello! I am Russell Fullmer, I am beginning to learn about network management and infrastructure and am going to be keeping this blog about my learnings! I have a small grasp on network management and the physical equipment that is necessary to build a network. I have built a network in a simulated environment while I was learning about network management, but I have never actually built a network for individuals to use and access things from. I am hoping that we get to learn about that and/or see how it is done to be able to expand my knowledge base on that and I am excited for everything that we will learn in this class!