Hi Everyone,

i hope somone can help me here before i go crazy.... I work in a Small businesss centre and we have recently moved office from a small pokey room to a 3 room office, much larger and better as we are about to get some more staff.

I am charged with setting up the Office Network as i am about the only person here who knows any thing about PC's but networking has never been my area...

OK i will try and explain my problems as good as i can.. Here goes..

In the old office we had 4 users each with there own PC connected to a 8 port Router with Ethernet Cables running all around the floors and around the Skirting etc.. We also had connected to that a Spare PC which ran a Basic Workgroup Network which we used as a File server and also ran our HP Scanner and HP Printer... Everything worked fine no problems.

We have since moved in to a Larger officer spanning through 3 rooms which the previous Tenants Had there own Ethernet ports installed all around all the walls in every room and linked up to a Cabinet near the ceiling there is a 3 com 24 port Switch on a Rack and also another rack numbered 1-24 which i am guessing is all the Net Ports from the 3 rooms.

I would like to be able to use these Netowrk ports and this rack instead of running ethernet cables through walls etc round desks or making all the PCs laptops Wireless but i cannot get it to work...

At the moment we just have wires every were and a similar setup to the old office.

How do i get the 24 Port Switch to share my net connection and create a network ? I can run 1 cable in to the Rack from the ADSL modem to the rack but what port do i plug it in to 1-24 ? Then how do i set up the Network for the other users ? I have ran a cable from the Point were the internet comes in ADSL in to the rack and put in a basic router (bypassing the 3 com 24 switch) then plugged 4 cables from the router in the corosponding ports in Rack i go to the PCs.. One gets a connection the others just keep dropping connection every 3 seconds.. and never stay stable ? Any ideas. i can provide a lot more info and pictures if req.. I am just totally stuck now. I can quite possibly rule out that all the cables and ports are working and its maybe a soetware or set up ?

Cheers And thanks for reading.

Scott