Small Network Help

Hi All,

New poster here. Just after a bit of advice on creation of a small network for media sharing. I’m currently based at Camp Bastion, Afghanistan and we have a smallish (about 180 clients) network connecting all of us together to a shared storage space; one NAS of 2TB. I work in the computer field so know enough about network operation to get by on the installation and administration side, however creating a new network and buying specific bits of kit are a different story and I’ve never had to look into it until now.

Currently it takes around 4 hours to download one 1GB film from the NAS; hardly surprising given the amount of users connecting to the NAS. This results in people streaming the films direct from the NAS, thus decreasing the bandwidth available to download and slowing everything down further.

We are looking to invest some time and a little bit of money (a welfare network is hardly top priority for us) into improving this facility as at the minute we may as well not have one.

The network is currently a load of switches plugged in a star topology; further slowing the network down. One of our ideas is to change this from a star to a tree, which should hopefully increase the actual network speed allowing connection to each other without going through one switch.

The other, if we can find the funding, is to buy three or four routers and split the users evenly between them, obviously with the clients plugged into switches, then switches plugged into the routers.

Next up, again if we can find the funding, is to buy two or three more NAS’ and separate them across the routers; getting rid of the current bottleneck.

What I’m after is some information on routers and NAS’ as I have next to none! Main thing is value for money and reliability. Even 10Mbps would be in improvement on what we currently have. Space needs to be around 3 TB for the NAS’ put together. If anyone has any other useful info please let me know, the cheaper the better!

Rich

so you have 180 clients working on one nas drive --- woo talk about speed issues...

Now your talking about films, so you have films on your nas drive, which your sending out to 180 people??

Ok what are you trying to achieve?

I know speed is a issue but what is the goal you want??

Do you want to become the countries biggest film sharer?

Tell me what your using the network for and I can advice you?
Are they for multiple use for instance, music, films, do you do any work on them too i.e office work etc? Are you a business