Problem Statement
What are the essential components of a SOHO (Small Office Home Office) IT environment? How does a SOHO Network Architecture look like?
Solution Abstract
What is SOHO?
A SOHO or
Small Office Home Office is normally a small organisation of 25 or less users. For designing the IT (Information Technology) architecture for a SOHO, this whiteprint further categorises it into -
- HO or Home Office environment with a user-base of 10 or less, needing only basic IT infrastructure;
- SO or Small Office environment with a user-base of up to 25, needing reasonably complex IT infrastructure.
The Inner-workings
Feature Matrix
The below feature-matrix depicts the IT features expected by
Home Office and
Small Office respectively.
(
High Resolution Image)
Network Sketch - Home Office
Network Sketch - Small Office
Glossary
| SOHO | Small Office Home Office |
| WAN | Wide Area Network |
| LAN | Local Area Network |
| TCP/IP | Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol. |
| FTP | File Transfer Protocol. A reliable and flexible TCP/IP protocol for transferring files between systems. |
| Dial-in / PPP | A telephone based network where Client can dial-in into a Host and get connected to authorized network. This uses PPP (Point-to-Point-Protocol) for communication. |
| RAS | Remote Access Server. A server that accepts dial-in requests from Clients over a Telephone-and-MODEM and provides access to network. |
| DHCP | Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. The TCP/IP protocol to assign IP addresses to clients dynamically, based on pre-configured rules. |
| DNS | Domain Name Service. The TCP/IP protocol for name resolution of IP addresses. |
| HOSTS File | A special TEXT file containing entries for IP-to-Name mapping. This is used by the system to resolve human readable names into IP addresses. |
| Gateway / Proxy | A specialized server that proxies access to Internet and enables access control. |
| CAT-5 | Category 5. The cable for connecting "Ethernet Nodes" in a network. |
| WiFi | Wireless networking, where "Ethernet Nodes" can connect over a wireless network. This is an alternate to CAT-5 based wired network for less heavy usage. |
| Router | A device that routes TCP packets between different IP networks. This is used to connect one network with another. |
| USB | Universal Serial Bus. |
| ISP | Internet Service Provider. |
| Micro Site | A dedicated set of pages in a larger website, containing focused and targeted content. This is mostly used for marketing campaigns and similar. |
Paper Code: TWP_1005.10, Version: 1.0, Author: Biswajit Dash, License: CC-BY-ND, Published: Feb-2017