For all those law firms without a large IT budget, Kashi explains how to design and specify a new network infrastructure for the entire office.

Suppose that you started all over and had to set up a solo or small firm practice? What technology makes the most practical sense, how much does it cost, and how would you do it?

For a surprisingly large number of lawyers, that's not an abstract concept. Recent ABA studies show that even as mega-firms become mega-mega-firms, the majority of all practicing lawyers are solo and small firm practitioners and that an increasing number of large firm lawyers are joining their ranks. Your tech support and system administrator is, more often than not you, which means that your technology budget and your vacation plans are probably pulling in different directions.

With that in mind, what makes sense for the newly solo or for the small firm revamping its technology? As I began my move to a new office space, I too had both the opportunity and the need to start from scratch.

In this issue, I'll discuss designing and specifying a new network infrastructure for the entire office. And in our next issue, I'll go into desktop and notebook computers in some detail, along with application programs, exhibit printers and secondary audio, video and photographic hardware and software for the litigator.

Operating Systems

The first question, of course, is Windows, Linux, or Mac, and which flavor. Although the Apple Macintosh is a most interesting platform and the Linux is both robust and generally free, I stayed with Windows, but not because of any particular fondness for slower performance, higher cost and lower stability/reliability. The sad truth is that lawyers, unlike graphics designers or industrial applications, are hooked into Windows XP or Windows Vista. The old adage that useful application software dictates the choice of the operating system, rather than the other way around, is especially true for lawyers. Most of the really useful programs specific to the legal industry run only within pretty recent versions of the Windows operating system. Sigh.

So, Windows it is. Three versions remain available: Windows XP Service Pack 2 for 32 bit processors, the 64 bit version of Windows XP, and the new Windows Vista. Given Vista's voracious demand for computing power devoted to secondary features of little value to the business user and Vista's reputation for the instability inevitable in any new Microsoft operating system, I chose Windows XP, which is finally pretty reliable. Because the faster and technically superior 64 bit version of XP (dubbed x64) lacks support for most fast document scanners, I reluctantly used the 32 bit version of Windows XP, Service Pack 2, even though every computer in my office is capable of 64 bit operation. Every application program and hardware of practical interest to the law office works with the 32 bit version of Windows XP and it is stable and fast enough, and better than current versions of Windows Vista at this point. Although most new computers come with some version of Windows installed, an OEM copy of Windows XP will set you back about $140 per computer.

The New Network Infrastructure

Your network infrastructure is now the key component of your law office. It stores your files, provides your online legal research library, organizes your litigation files, maintains your calendar, contacts, and to-do lists, and provides data backup and disaster recovery. Proper network specification requires more precision and care than deciding which desktop computers to buy. Desktop computers are, within reason, pretty fungible commodities these days so long as they are stable and fast when running Windows XP and have a dual core processor, fast hard disk and enough RAM.

I used the 64 bit version of Windows XP as the basis for my file server. Even though this may surprise most attorneys of modern persuasion, many solo and small firm lawyers are not yet networked, an omission that costs a lot more staff resources, money and hassle than you might imagine. Although every version of Windows XP allows you to network every computer and printer in the office to your heart's content, such free-wheeling ways have a tendency to spin out of control and have always concerned me. It's much better to keep all of your data on a single high-end server computer, even if that computer is only acting as a host for Microsoft's peer to peer networking inherent to Windows XP.

There are several good reasons to keep all of your data on a central file server. It's definitely a faster and more stable arrangement. Application programs do cause desktop computers to lock up from time to time and if someone's workstation is also acting as a file server for others, then any freeze or crash brings down the entire network. In addition, it's harder to keep track of the latest version of any file or operating system when different versions are scattered through dark corners of all the computers in your office. Finally, your data backups will be more complete and reliable if all data is maintained, used, and backed up from a single location.

The 64 bit version of Windows XP (Windows Professional x64) is about 30% faster than plain vanilla 32 bit Windows XP and requires 64-bit capable hardware, which is about 98% of the new market over the past two years. x64 is quite stable when operating as a file server because it actually is a Windows XP look-alike interface on top of much of the sophisticated 64 bit code used in Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 network operating system. Aside from two quirks that I experienced, it was easy to set up as a file server and has been very robust and fast. An OEM 64 bit version of Windows XP x64 will set you back about $140, about the same as regular 32 bit Windows XP.

Setting Up a Peer to Peer Network

Setting up a peer to peer network in theory should be easy. After you've installed Windows XP on each computer, run the Network Setup Wizard found under "Accessories" "Communications" and set up peer to peer sharing. I prefer to share only a single comprehensive network data folder on the designated file server. Then, using the My Network Places, Tools, Map network drive option, designate the shared data folder as a drive letter to be reconnected each time that you star your computer. Be totally consistent with shared folder and drive letter designations to avoid any confusion or conflicts. Be sure that each computer has a unique name and identifier.

Initially, even though I have had many years of networking experience, I could not get Windows XP peer to peer networking up and running without some quirks. It turns out that my network cabling and hardware, simple though it was, was too sophisticated for Microsoft's peer to peer networking right out of the box. Ultimately, I found that, for hassle-free initial installation, one should use Microsoft's default workgroup name and use only a single network switch to connect all of the computers, printers and Internet access. I avoided sharing everyone's printers and documents with everyone else. It's just too easy, under those circumstances, to misfile and misplace documents. After you've gotten everything communicating properly, then go back and be sure that you have set up the system security, including nuanced sharing rights and firewalls. Ultimately, with quick DSL connections and the right kind of routers at the office and at home, you can set up a "Virtual Private Network" (VPN) that allows you to securely access your entire network from a remote location. That's definitely worth the extra effort and experimentation.

Networking Hardware

I bought an inexpensive ($60 Netgear model 108) eight port gigabit speed network switch that directly connects a file server, five desktop and one notebook computer, and my high speed Internet connection. The 64 bit Windows network file server discussed below can handle a fair sized office, so the practical limitation upon the ultimate size of a peer to peer network will be the number of direct connections available on the network switch. Low cost brand name switches are available with up to 24 individual connections. If you're not sure about how many connections you'll need, then buy a larger model to accommodate future demands. I maxed out an 8 port switch with just myself, four employees, a notebook computer, file server and Internet access.

Be sure that you get a gigabyte speed Ethernet "switch" rather than a slightly less expensive "network hub". Unlike a switch, which can connect any Ethernet device to any other Ethernet device at the optimum speed for each, a network hub cannot detect and adapt to Ethernet devices running at different speeds. That means that a hub either runs your file server's connection to the rest of your network at excruciatingly slow speed or that it cannot communicate with DSL modems and printers, both of which typically include only slow Ethernet connections. Using a gigabit speed switch avoids all such problems without any hassle.

Why bother with a fast network connection? Network connection speed really didn't matter very much when we only used a network to store retrieve small word processing files. Now, although perhaps five or seven years behind the rest of the world, the legal profession is becoming very visual, with high resolution photographs, video depositions, paperless filing systems using Acrobat, and high speed Internet access all vying for the same network bandwidth. Only gigabit speed networking can provide adequate performance for these modern network demands, even in the smallest law office. Luckily, gigabit networking is really quite inexpensive. Most new computers include at least one built in gigabit speed Ethernet port without extra charge. If needed, you can always buy an add-in card; I paid $15 for my last add-in gigabit Ethernet card. Even if your notebook computer only has a 100 megabit Ethernet connection, it will connect, albeit more slowly, to a gigabit speed switch. Connecting network cabling should be at least 350MHz Category 5E or, better yet, more modern 500 MHz Category 6. A modern gigabit switch and proper cabling are the only hardware that you need, aside from the computers and printers that you will connect, for a completely modern network.

What Goes Inside the File Server Box?

You can buy a generic file server or you can have one built to your custom specifications using the best quality, most reliable and fastest components. I chose to build my own but unless you are fairly expert, don't try assembling this at home. I used the following components, which I believed to provide the best value, reliability and performance for the $2,100 or so that I allocated for a new file server. I bought most of the products mentioned here from www.newegg.com, which I consider to be one of the most reliable, low cost and best-stocked Internet vendors. Orders almost always arrived complete within two business days of being placed.

1. AMD Opteron 1216. This is a fast dual core CPU intended for file servers although it also works very well in a desktop computer. I prefer it to Intel's more expensive Xeon file server CPU. Use 4 gigabytes of matched high speed DDR2 RAM memory.

2. Abit Fatality1 system board - this is a very stable, robust board that's aimed at gamers and hence optimized for performance and heavy usage. It set up with less hassle than any that I previously seen. It's worth the $60 premium. I bought this system board because its excellent built-in RAID disk array controller for modern high speed SATA disks allowed me to set up a high-end failure-resistant disk array in about five minutes. The Abit Fatality1 can connect up to six SATA hard disks. Not too long ago, setting up a RAID disk array was akin to rocket science: an expensive black box, whose internals were known mostly to wizards and that blew up with a certain regularity. Some of the higher end ASUS, DFI and MSI boards have similar levels of reliability and features.

3. The RAID disk array: take three150 gigabyte Western Digital 10,000 rpm Raptor SATA hard disks, which are undoubtedly the fastest, and probably the most reliable, hard disks available at a rational price (about $210 each). Then, attach a powered hard disk cooler to each one, and then connect them to the power supply and to the system board SATA data connections. In only a few minutes, you can electronically combine these three discrete hard disks, whose individual capacities total 450 gigabytes, into what appears, to your operating system, to be a single 300 GB hard disk. Why, you might reasonably ask, would any reasonably sane person spend about $700 to turn 450 gigabytes into 300 gigabytes, especially when you can buy a perfectly good 300 gigabyte hard disk for $90? Data security and fast performance. A RAID hard electronically spreads all of its data over the three disk drives, reading and writing simultaneously, and achieving even better performance than any of its individual fast hard disks. That's important when many people are trying to access the same hard disk for large Acrobat or multimedia files.
   
   Even more important, though, is a RAID disk array's redundancy and consequent high level of resistance to data loss when disk drive hardware fails. Any one of a RAID array's individual hard disks can fail and your system will continue working without data loss. When you replace the failed hard disk, the RAID array uses special data stored on the two remaining disks in the array to reconstitute the third hard disk as a fully functioning disk array component without any data loss. Even though you are undoubtedly backing up your network data every day, you still need this sort of operational reliability. Down time is just too costly for a law firm.

4. A big reliable power supply and lots of fans. You'll need a top end voltage stabilized 500 watt power supply for any file server. Although vendors typically use the least expensive power supply that they can find, don't fall into that gambit. Failing power supplies are probably the most common reason that network file server hardware fails. Be sure that you have a large battery-powered uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to ensure continued operation if there wall outlet power fails. I prefer APC brand UPS devices - they're reliable and are recognized as a USB device capable of shutting down the file server when the battery runs low. Best of all, they're readily available at Costco and not too expensive.
   
   Use as many fans and as large a tower case as feasible. All of this hardware generates a lot of heat, so you'll need as many fans and as much unobstructed interior case volume as possible. Large 120 mm fans exhausting hot air from the file server case tend to do a better job cooling a computer's interior than smaller fans or fans that blow outside air into the case. Where possible, use fans that are powered and controlled by the system board through small three pin connectors that plug directly into the system board. These are monitored and controlled by your system board hardware as your hardware heats up. The Raptor hard disks run very fast and hence very hot. Attach a hard disk cooler to each: I like the Coolmax products that are screwed into the bottom of each hard disk and that blow cool air on to the exposed hard disk electronics, which seems to be the most common point of hard disk failure. I also install all three RAID hard disks in a position where one large fan blows cool outside air across all three disk drives.
   
   Finally, here's a trick that I used to cool the file server's tightly packed RAM. Most modern tower cases include a side-mounted fan on the removable panel. Usually, this fan is almost perfectly placed to blow cool outside on to the RAM memory. Modern RAM runs hot, and is highly susceptible to heat failure. The colorful little heat spreaders that most RAM vendors now put on their chips are helpful but more a marketing ploy. You'll need to supplement those bright red or serious-looking black heat spreaders with cool outside air. Determine which way the side-mounted fan is blowing. If it's blowing from the outside inward, then that's great; your RAM cooling problem is probably already solved. If it's exhausting hot air, then simply reverse the action. These fans are simply attached by four self-threading screws. Remove the screws, reverse the fan, and then re-attach the other side with the self-threading screws.

5. Simple data backup. Back up your data every day, even if your new file server has a RAID disk array. The RAID array only protects against hardware failure and that's very critical. However, most studies suggest that about 80% of business data loss occurs because of employee error. A RAID array respond to the delete command just as promptly as a single hard disk and the data will be just as "gone". A RAID array has no value in protecting against fire, theft, disaster, or other casualty loss. Only a proper daily "full" backup, stored off-premises, protects against operator error, theft and casualty loss. Tape drives used to be the backup device of choice but are now totally obsolete, at least for the small law firm. Far better, far less expensive, and far more reliable are portable hard disks. These plug into a high speed USB 2.0 port and are recognized as just another hard disk when plugged into the file server or other computer with full rights to all data. Up to 160 gigabytes or so, you can use a small 9.5 mm hard disk generally intended for notebook computers. Although a little more expensive, these have the advantage of being powered by the USB port itself and do not require any other external source of electrical power. As such they are highly portable. If you need more storage space than that, then you can either buy an already configured 300GB to 500GB external hard disk for $150 to $250 or make one yourself for about $125. This takes about three minutes using a screwdriver, a standard 3.5" hard disk and a matched externally powered USB drive enclosure. I used some Masscool enclosures with Seagate 7200.10 320 GB SATA hard disks and they work well when used either with the ubiquitous Windows backup accessory program or when simply dragging and copying the entire set of data folders in Windows. Regardless of what hardware you choose, use it every day and store the backups off premises.

In our next issue: desktop and notebook computers, application programs, exhibit printers, and secondary audio, video and photographic hardware and software for the litigator.