WiFi that reaches the car park.

// Cabling

Structured cabling, done neatly and labelled.

Every access point, desk phone, camera and printer that matters ends up on a cable. The cabling is the part of the network that outlives every box plugged into it, so it is worth doing once and doing properly.

• Per point, from $165 ex GST. That includes the run, the termination at both ends and a test on every point before we hand over.
• Racks and patch panels. Every run lands on a labelled patch panel in a rack or wall cabinet, with the switch beside it. A cable that goes straight from a wall plate into a switch port is a fault waiting for the next person.
• What a tidy comms cupboard looks like. Numbered points on the wall plates that match the numbers on the panel, tidy patch leads, and a written map of what goes where. It sounds fussy until the day something breaks and you find the right port in seconds.
• Building access sets the price. A suspended ceiling with clear access is the easy case. Concrete, solid walls and long runs cost more. We walk the site first, free, and the quote is fixed after that.

Wireless design and installation lives on the business Wi-Fi page. Business Wi-Fi →

// Switching

Switching and VLANs: tills, guests and cameras kept apart.

Every device on a default ISP router sits on one flat network. Your accounts PC, the EFTPOS terminal, the lunchroom TV and a visitor's laptop can all see each other. A managed switch and a VLAN plan is how you stop that.

• Managed switch, from $440 ex GST supplied and configured. One physical network carved into several logical ones, with rules on what may talk to what.
• The VLAN plan we recommend. Office for staff PCs and laptops. Servers for anything holding business data, reachable from the office network on the specific services staff need and nothing else. Phones on their own segment. Guest for visitors and staff phones, internet only, with no path to anything of yours. Cameras and point-of-sale get their own segment for the same reason.
• Why it matters on a bad day. A staff laptop that picks up malware cannot reach the EFTPOS gear, the server shares or the phones. "The whole business is infected" becomes "one laptop needs rebuilding".
• PoE budget for phones and cameras. Desk phones and 4K PoE cameras draw their power from the switch. The switch needs enough power budget for every port that feeds one, and if the phones are meant to keep working through a power flicker, the switch that powers them has to stay up too.

The full build, from the ISP box to a separated network, is in what a proper small-business router and firewall build looks like.

// Firewalls

Firewalls that get patched.

The box your internet provider sent was built to a price. The firewall settings are shallow, the vendor controls the firmware, and when the connection drops your whole business drops with it. One capable router and firewall does the security work instead of a pile of gadgets taped together.

• Firewall supplied and hardened, from $880 ex GST. Replaces the ISP router. Default accounts closed, management locked to the inside, rules written for your VLAN plan, and firmware current at handover. Ongoing monitoring and support is available under the managed network option (from $165 per month).
• MikroTik for most offices, pfSense where demands are heavier. MikroTik is compact, low power and happy doing dual WAN, VLANs, voice priority and VPN all day. pfSense suits sites with lots of VPN users or stricter inspection. Both are proven, and both cost far less than the enterprise names.
• Voice gets a lane. The router prioritises voice traffic, so a big upload mid-afternoon slows the upload, not the phone call.
• Remote access done on the router. Staff working from home connect through a VPN terminated on the firewall itself, with proper credentials, encrypted, and with the same rules an office laptop gets. Not a remote-control app on the server, and not a port opened straight to a desktop.
• Site-to-site VPN, from $440 ex GST per site. Two or more offices joined over an encrypted link so shared files, phones and printers work as if they were in one building.

Once it is built, our small business IT support plans in Sydney monitor the network and roll out patches on a schedule.

// Multi-site

Multi-site links that stay up.

A second office is a network problem before it is anything else. Two things keep the link between sites useful: a VPN that joins them, and a second internet connection at each end so the VPN survives an NBN outage.

• Failover, not load balancing, for almost everyone. A small business does not lose money because the internet is 40 percent slower. It loses money because the terminal is offline and the phones are dead. Failover keeps a cheap second link idle until the primary fails, then carries the load until it comes back. About nine jobs in ten end up as failover. The difference is explained in dual WAN load balancing vs failover.
• Detection done properly. Pinging the NBN box on the wall proves nothing, because it answers while the carrier behind it is dead. The router tests real internet targets through each link, needs several consecutive misses before it fails over, and fails back cautiously so a marginal link does not flap.
• 4G or 5G as the backup. Good for failover because it only carries traffic during an outage. One catch: mobile carriers rarely give you a public IP, so the VPN into the office stops working while you are on the backup unless you plan around it.
• Tested by pulling the plug. A failover that has never been tested is a guess. We test it before you need it. The managed network option (from $165 per month) covers monitoring and support after that. Remote support means the second and third sites are not penalised for being further away.

// Indicative pricing

What it roughly costs.

Real numbers, because "contact us for pricing" is code for "brace yourself." These are honest ballparks, your fixed quote comes after a free consult.

Indicative pricing ex GST at market rates +10%. Cabling varies with building access, free walk-through first, fixed quote after.

// Questions

Networking, your questions answered.

// Pairs well with