Configuring Network Management

Without your network properly functioning, communication between your systems can shut down. We monitor and manage your network for you. We can manage devices like routers, firewalls, and managed switches. We can monitor availability of your sites internet up-time, and know about any failure of your network quickly. Our team can then respond and resolve the issue. Also by performing regular ongoing monitoring and maintenance on your network, we often uncover analyitical data in the monitoring statistics that point out previously unidentified network issues, and allow us to take proactive action against inconsistencies we find through our regular reporting process. Our Network Management product is crucial for all clients who seek complete IT As a Service.

Using the quote cart on the network management page, you can configure our services based on your specific organization's needs. We recommend a Network Management service plan for each physical site with an internet connection. We do require at least 1 broadband connection at each site for access to our services. If you have multiple sites, you can specifiy the network plan for you by configuring each site and adding them to the cart individually. Some businesses have many sites which are often identical. In those cases, you could configure one network's option, and change the quantity to correspond with the number of sites you need us to manage.

The first option is Local Area Network. Here, you should select how many hubs/switches are at your site.

Next, determine what kind of router you have. This is the device that connects your network to your Internet Service Provider. Most ISP's provide the router, however some high-end network connection require you to provide your own equipment and manage it. If your unsure, you can always contact our sales department and we can help determine the right choice.

After the router, we need to understand what kind of firewall is in place. Some networks have a "firewall" integrated into the ISP's router. Other's, use devices like Linksys, Netgear, or Dlink (among many others) which connect to the ISP's equiptment. Some networks have more sophisticated firewalls like Sonicwall, Barracuda, or Cisco PIX. Choose the firewall that corresponds to your organization.

Once the firewall has been determined, we need to know if you have multiple internet connections, which allow one to go down, and the other link to keep your network functioning. If not, just leave the option as the default.

Next, we need to know if you are using a VPN - virtual private network - to access your company's network. If so, we need to know what kind of VPN. There are two basic kinds of VPN. One kind, allows you to "dial-in" to your own network from a remote location, and access it as if you were on it locally. The other kind of VPN connects entire sites together, physically, such as a corporate headquarters with several branch offices. If you have a VPN, you can configure it here. There are two ways that site to site VPN's are commonly connected. One is called "spoke and wheel", and the other is called "full mesh". In the spoke and wheel scenario, you should choose to configure your corporate headquarters site with many VPN tunnels, for example if you have a "spoke and wheel" vpn with 4 branch offices, you would choose 4 point to point vpn tunnels. You would still need to configure the additional branch office networks, but instead of choosing 4 point-to-point vpn tunnels, you would choose 1 point-point vpn tunnel at each site. In a different example, using a full mesh, each site would connect to the other 4 sites, so you would configure each network with 4 point to point vpn tunnel connections, or if they are all identical configures, just modify the item quantity and add it to the quote cart.

Contact sales for questions.

Once the VPN configuration is determined, then chooise if there is an SSL certificate we need to manage on the firewalll. If so, select the appropriate option

Finnaly the last option is to select the wireless configuration at your site. There are options for basic WIFI and bridges. Chooise the option that applies for your site.

Now choose the quantitiy to you want. Your done and ready to click add to cart.

Once you've added the Network management product to your quote cart, you should make sure to scroll down and click on Desktop - Per Month or Server - Per month to configure your entire network and computer system for management from Node.