Networking Wiring Standards

Prepared by: Mr. Mike Rackley (rackley@cc.msstate.edu)
Manager, Systems and Network Programming
Mississippi State University

[NCTP note: This material is, actually, a response to an email request for assistance. Feel free to extract and use any of this information as you see fit.
A typical way for high schools to gain Internet connectivity is through a University. Since you're in Mobile, the University of South Alabama would be the logical choice. I don't know who you need to deal with down there, but I would recommend someone in the Computing Center as a starting point.

Cost of Internet connectivity depends upon a lot of variables. Here are some of the basic points.

Are you trying to provide Internet connectivity for an entire school, or just a handful of people? If only a few people, then a low cost, low speed, low capability dialup connection might be suitable.

But if you're looking at providing Internet access for an entire high school, then a dedicated 56kbps or T1 connection would probably be most appropriate. Rough costs for a 56kbps connection would be about $5,000 initially and about $200 per month. T1 would probably run you about $9,000 initially plus $200 per month. T1 is equal to 24 times the speed of a 56kbps line. The per month cost is a line charge that you would pay to the phone company. I'm giving you approx. rates for our area of the country. Your mileage may vary.

Now once you've made these basic Internet connectivity decisions, then you've got to make decisions about the network infrastructure within your high school. If you're going the dialup route for only a few people, then all you're talking about would be cost of modems and phone lines (plus of course some place to dial into). But if you're looking at providing connectivity for the entire high school, then you'll need some sort of "campus" network which would connect all of the PCs and MACs in the school building together and would then, in turn, connect to your 56kbps or T1 Internet connection.

It could be that your high school already has a local area network such as ethernet or token ring installed, in which case you might be in pretty good shape. But if you don't then you could be looking at a very significant expense. Assuming that your PCs and MACs are of suitable size and horsepower to do their current chores, plus take on Internet duties as well, then you'd be looking at purchasing an ethernet card for every machine, figure $120 per machine, plus the cost of wiring and electronics to connect each machine, figure $150-$200 per machine (note that this cost could be somewhat lower, or very much higher, depending on what kind of wiring scheme you go with, and how difficult it is to wire the building). You also need to decide if you want to add something like a Novell file server to the mix to give enhanced, extremely desirable network capabilities. If so, a Novell server could easily run you $7,000 or more, depending on how it's configured. And then there's also the cost of extra software that you may need to exploit some of the Internet capabilities. There's quite a bit of free software available, but to do some of the niftier things such as Mosaic, you're looking at needing to buy either commercial software, or shareware. You could easily spend $50 per PC, at a minimum, for extra software.

And finally, USA (Univ. of South AL) might charge you a fee for hooking to the Internet through them. That would be between you and them.

I hope this doesn't scare you off. It's a lot of work, and potentially rather expensive. But I think the rewards are well worth it.