Plain descriptions of the equipment and the changes, for San Diego shops and small offices.
Everything below is agreed in writing, and quoted, before anything is configured. A walkthrough comes first and costs nothing; nothing is installed on the strength of a phone call.
An OPNsense firewall on a small appliance, sitting between your ISP router and everything you work on. Rules are written per source and destination — which devices may start a connection to what — reviewed with you, applied, and then written down in your handover.
VLANs across a managed switch and your wireless access points put the point-of-sale lane, the office lane and the guest lane on separate networks. Traffic crosses from one lane to another only where a rule we agreed says it may. Guest Wi-Fi is configured to reach the internet and nothing else on the premises.
Worth knowing: devices sharing a lane still reach each other without crossing the firewall. Separation is one control, and the findings say where it does and does not help.
Every device that connects, listed and labeled on a diagram, with what we observed, why it matters and what to do about it — in an order you can work through. Yours to keep and to hand to anyone else who works on the network.
Before the job is finished you put the network back on the ISP router yourself, using the written steps, while we watch. If a site has no workable way back, we say so and do not install. Every site stays bypassable: if the appliance fails, you plug into the ISP router until the next support window.
Firewall appliance, managed switch and access points are itemised on the quote at what we paid, separately from labour. Used equipment is named as used, is erased and reloaded with the maker's current firmware, is tested port by port and run under load for 48 hours first, and carries our own 12-month replacement commitment because it has no manufacturer warranty. The new price is always shown beside it.
The payment terminal, the payment application, and any system that stores, processes or transmits cardholder data are outside this work. We assess and configure the business network around them. If something proposed would affect that boundary, we stop and ask your processor or acquirer for scope direction. More about our scope.
Tick what you want, then tell us where to reply
Nothing is charged here and nothing is booked. You will get a short automatic acknowledgement, and then a real reply from a person who has read what you ticked — with whatever we still need to ask, and a written quote or a suggestion that a walkthrough comes first. Ticking nothing is fine; the box below says so.
Would rather check your own setup first? Run the two-minute self-check — it runs in your browser and saves nothing.