[Also discussed at the “Who we serve” tab on our Home page.]

We work across all industries because our networking expertise is independent of the end user application. We let your computer, programming, and telephone specialists handle what they do best—the specifics of your user software and hardware. We specialize in providing the communication infrastructure "pipes" to efficiently share data traffic among users within and between locations.

Whatever your "bandwidth hog," from medical imaging to intensive corporate data, we design for the fast throughput you need.

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[Also discussed at the “What we do” tab on our Home page.]

As a networking specialist with a solid engineering background, we can evaluate all of your systems—computer, telephone, video, paging, and security—to provide integrated solutions for maximum capacity at lowest cost. For example, Local Area Networks (LANs) can often share cabling materials and/or installation among systems. Wide Area Networks (WANs) present even greater challenges: see the next FAQ.

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What special challenges are posed by Wide Area Networks (WANs)?

Since WANs must typically span distances of many miles between facilities (see comparison of LANs and WANs in the next FAQ), they pose several unique challenges that require a communications specialist with WAN expertise:

• WANs are natural bottlenecks, typically confined to a thousandth the throughput of LANs. Only a WAN specialist knows all the latest developments to maximize your effective throughput for any given type of application. 
  
• WANs are much more exposed to security breaches than LANs. A WAN specialist knows how to minimize your intrusion risk.
  
• WANs are subject to recurring service provider costs as well as fixed hardware costs. A WAN specialist can minimize those recurring costs, which are far more significant to your bottom line over the long haul than the fixed costs. 

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LANs interconnect individual devices such as computers, printers, and scanners within a facility (building or campus). Ethernet has become the most common LAN standard, with speeds now commonly at 1Gbps or higher; 1 gigabit per second equals 1,000 megabits per second, or 1,000,000 kilobits per second.

WANs interconnect two or more facilities, where each facility contains one or more devices or LANs. Common WAN speeds are much lower than LANs: they include dial-up at 56Kbps (kilobits per second), T1 at 1.5Mbps (megabits per second), and T3 at 45Mbps. DSL and cable typically provide download speeds on the order of T1, depending on other factors such as distance and user sharing; upload speeds are usually significantly lower. Within some metro areas it is possible to obtain higher speeds for short distances over special optical connections.

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In the world of Wide Area Networking, the term "legacy" generally applies to communications equipment designed to support lower speed connections (including serial) intended for applications that are primarily text based, or which employ basic user interfaces with only moderate bandwidth requirements. There is still a place for efficient systems of that type, particularly when a lot of data transfer is required over long distances. (See FAQ above about WAN versus LAN speeds.)

If you continue to work with a computer vendor who supports such an efficient protocol, you are an ideal candidate for a legacy system. Whether you use us to support an existing system or to provide refurbished hardware with proven performance, we have the know-how to support legacy equipment for very cost effective operation.

For a partial list of legacy equipment we provide or support, see Products & Services.

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For many years now it has been not only feasible but highly beneficial—if done properly—to combine your telephone connections with your computer data, a process referred to as voice/data convergence. There are three main advantages to converged versus separate communication paths:

• Your voice rides “toll-free" over paths you have already set up for data, thereby eliminating your intra-company long distance charges.
  
• You simplify your system by dealing with only one communication path and its network provider.
  
• Your employees save valuable time with each call by having all company locations appear as extensions or "hotlines" on their telephones.

While dial-up long distance charges have dramatically decreased over the years, so has the cost of convergence. And in any case you still benefit from the time-saving convenience.

You may already have an "IP phone" or integrated phone/computer system designed for voice/data convergence. But even if you have traditional phone systems designed to operate over analog phone lines, we can provide legacy hardware or IP gateways to give you the benefits of voice/data convergence.

No matter what your hardware, you must also have a Wide Area Network properly designed to support voice. While network backbones have improved dramatically, it is still critical to provide proper bandwidth, latency, and priority to voice channels. 

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Everything that applies to voice applies many times over when converging video with computer data. While the challenge is greater, video convergence offers even more potential for cost savings; in particular, visual communication appeals to many as a means of eliminating travel time and cost.

While highly compressed video has become commonplace in computers, it is possible to achieve much higher quality video conferencing with special hardware properly integrated into the Wide Area Network.

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While there are many economic advantages (such as lower labor and real estate costs) to locating manufacturing and certain other corporate facilities in rural communities, one major downside is the lack of qualified technical expertise and support. This is especially true of computer networking and other communications technologies. Horror stories abound of independent telephone companies and local electricians working outside their fields of know-how.

When NETWORK ARCHITECHS travels to a remote location, we have the expertise to evaluate all of the facility’s communications systems: computer, telephone, paging, and security. Through personnel interviews and technical assessments, we prioritize areas for improvement, determine solutions, and devise the most cost-effective way to implement and maintain solutions, including:

• We share new cabling materials and related labor among systems whenever feasible.
  
• We train your employees to do as much of the on-site installation and maintenance as possible; this greatly reduces contract labor cost, with many routine repairs done in-house (augmented by our telephone support as needed) to minimize contract travel time and expense.
  
• We integrate remote management into sophisticated products such as routers and switches so that we can do upgrades, changes, and routine fault isolation remotely. By eliminating the time and expense of most travel to the site, we provide much faster response at lower cost.