What you are usually trying to solve
The Wi-Fi dies in the back. Guests are on the same network as the file server. The printers were plugged in wherever the cable reached. The register sits next to the office PCs. One internet line means a cut fiber is a closed office. Nobody knows whether the firewall, the switch, or the provider is the thing that failed.
VLANs we configure
A VLAN is a lane. Same building, separate traffic. We design the lanes for the office you have, then configure the firewall and the switches to match.
- Staff computers, where the day-to-day work lives
- Servers and the file shares, reached on purpose, not by anyone who joined the Wi-Fi
- Network printers, Sharp, Brother, HP, and Canon, on their own lane
- Guest Wi-Fi, internet only
- The register and card devices, when you take cards in the office, on a lane of their own
- A clinic's chart server off the guest Wi-Fi, so a visitor in the waiting room is not on that share
The rest of the network
- Wi-Fi for the front, the back, and the shop floor
- SonicWall, Cisco, Juniper, Fortinet, Palo Alto, WatchGuard, Sophos, Meraki, and the firewall already in the rack
- A second internet path that takes over when the primary drops
- A straight answer when the internet is down and nobody knows which piece failed
SonicWallCiscoJuniperFortinetPalo AltoWatchGuardSophosMerakiUbiquitipfSenseCheck PointBarracuda
We configure the network that is there. Pulling new cable through the walls is a different trade.