Networking Question

[Ritalin Kid]

Ok this is a question for the pros...

Basically someone has put me up to the task of setting up a secure network for a pretty big apt complex that is geared toward housing college kids.

There are a total of 16 buildings.. each building has 12 apartments and each aprtment has a total of 4 ethernet jacks. Well right now they have a Bellsouth Westel DSL modem plugged into a Linksys 4 port router which is then uplinked to 2 HP 24 port switches. So basically it's a networking nightmare.

When we surveyed the buildings networks they were poorly configured. Because there is nothing there to manage the connection of course all of these students hooking there computers up with no virus protection and KaZaA has completely zapped all bandwidth for the tenants.

As of now each building has it's own 1.5/256 DSL connection.. the property manager wants to bring in one single T1 to accomodate 750+ connections in all 16 buildings. We told him he basically has no clue as this will only make thigns worse in terms of bandwidth limitation for each tenant will be much worse since one T1 is only 1.5/1.5 to ALL 16 buildings since now each building has it's own 1.5/256 connection through DSL.

Our plan so far is to suggest each building to have it's own Comcast business internet connection each with a static IP address thus their connection speed per building would be 3M/256K. We also thought about suggesting a firebox and Cisco router for each building and not to mention A BATTERY BACKUP / SURGE PROTECTOR for the equipment as everything is plugged straight into the wall.

Our biggest concern is the ability to limit bandwidth per connection and block any P2P ports as well as file sharing. That's right as of now each building is one great happy worm sharing network with MS File Sharing wide open.

So does anyone know where I should start in finding some good bandwidth managment network hardware?

ah yes p2p, a network admins worst fear

two questions

how comforterable are you to setting up llinux as a router?

with linux you can manage or disable the kaaza port together

http://www.intrago.co.uk/products/censornet.php

that might help

which cisco router were yuo suggesting you get. i believe with cisco you can block certain ports from work on the network.

sounds likes you have a nice size network problem over there

[Ritalin Kid]

We were thinking that a Cisco 2600 would be the best bet... but we were looing into getting a Firebox with bandwidth management capabilities if such a Firebox product exists.