Network Set Up Help

Hey guys,

I’m in a shared living environment at the moment where we are sharing a business class internet connection. All of the rooms are wired for internet and there are usually about 60 connections to the internet.

Hardware:
Modem
AirPort Extreme
2 Switches
7 Air Port Expresses

With this information, what would be the ideal set-up? If I want to preserve mostly internet speed and local transfers. Also, would I see any benefit from installing a gateway server?

I know that this is a lot of ask of you guys but I do really appreciate it.

Thanks

Sorry I was half asleep when I wrote this…

There is a network in place that looks like it was put together by 8 year olds. We have routers that are somehow being used as switches… it’s a mess.

We don’t make that much use of the wired network to be honest. I would like to make more use of it, but, that is not really up to me. This was the first time that I had really looked at the network as it stopped functioning and I was asked to take a look at it.

At the moment there really are no services being hosted (unless you want to count a Time Capsule..), I would however like to add some security to the network, also a few services. Its about 30 computers, 20 phones, 10 misc.

I guess my question here is weather or not the AirPort really has the backbone to handle a network this large. When I have done networks this big I’m usually running it though a gateway to distribute DNS and IP’s to the network and not making use of dedicated router hardware (So I;m usually using an XServe or Mac Pro in place of a router)…

So do you guys think that I need to convince the board here to upgrade to better hardware of should what we have be good?

JC7