Network Design Tutorials

[Hobbzilla]

I will be setting up an e-commerce storefront. I have thought about outsourcing the hosting but like all the features of being able to tie in with my existing accounting information which is in-house. Does anyone have any links or book recommendations for setting up something like this? Basically would run off dsl but I've never set up a network like this.. what needs to go outside the firewall, etc. or should everything go inside firewall and just map html request through? Thanks.

 

[ScottMac]

Please take no offense here, I am honestly trying to offer the best advice to you that I can:

Don't do this yourself.

Putting up any kind of e-commerce site on your own, without knowing EXACTLY what you're getting into is a serious mistake. If you take credit cards, and fail to properly secure them against the vast multitudes of twits that are trying to break in and steal them is a major disservice to your customers.

I understand there are some ease-of-maintenance issues. If you decide to keep it at your home/office, you should hire the best consultant/VAR/integrator you can find. This is way beyond just "setting up a network at home and connecting it to the Internet."

There's lots of really smart folks here, and you're likely to get some great advice. The problem is that we can't see your setup, don't know all the details of your contract with the ISP, we don't know what you know and don't know. In short, there are so many variables, many of them CRITICAL to success and safety, that if you aren't sure about the configuration of the entire system, you need someone to see the site, review the ISP offerings, review your product or service, and make some very specific recommendations.

Getting information from a book may be helpful, but books are rarely absolutely current..they can't be because of the production lag.

IMHO, your best bet is hooking up with a VAR/Consultant....some ISPs have outside consulting services...shop around, get bids, get all the pitches...and follow-up on their references..take nothing for granted. With extremely rare exception...if it's not explicitly laid out on paper, it doesn't exist.

Good Luck

Scott

 

[Hobbzilla]

Thanks for the reply Scott,

I REALLY appreciate your candor.

But I hate to say this... but I've done all that. This isn't for the home. It is for a small buisness. The consultants we used came in and whipped up an e-commerce system set-up our servers loaded up computers with software we didn't have licenses for... loaded up a credit card processing software with no thought to security. I'm not gonna go into all the details here. Who knows who is reading this!! Actually one of the guys (MCSE, MCT, CCA, Compaq ASE) told me and I quote, "The way I feel about security is that no matter what you do, if someone wants to break in.. they will". I'm just glad he wasn't nominated by Bush for the head of Homeland Security.

My company spent a lot of money hiring this done. And I have cleaned a lot of the mess up. But not all of it. We can't afford to have this re-done.

My thoughts on the matter have been to NOT host credit card processing. But connect to a processor via https and let them handle the storage & auth codes, etc. Therefore, we wouldn't have anything on our system worth breaking into except for some customer information that 90% is public information anyways. I had thought about out sourcing the hosting mainly due to the fact that we aren't in the internet connection business and can't afford T1's, etc.

I am confident in my ability to LEARN. I have a good framework already set-up from the previous Yahoos (see above). I just want to make sure it is implemented correctly this time. This isn't something that will be thrown up fast because we need to get online, etc.