Setting up a new network for the office - few question

BloodSweatPings

I am in the process of upgrading our office network, We have 2 floors, ground and first, over 2 attached buildings.
We were planning to run a layer 2 switch from upstairs, as this is where the telephone lines come in. Then install Cat 6 cables from upstairs to downstairs (rj45 outlet) near the PCs.

However i feel that this is not the best way, would it be better to segregate each floor on either building with a separate switch and deploying the cable from the switch on each floor. Have a single cable trunk back or (link aggregate) back to the main switch.

There are about 20 members of staff at office at any time, but does rise to about 35 during peak times (mainly wirless).


What you guys think?

fredrikjj

What kind of requirements for recovery from a failure are there? I.e. how long of an outtage is acceptable?

Can you describe in more detail what the floor plan and current cabling system looks like?

BloodSweatPings

Recovery : We are not running any criticial or any realtime applications onsite, so recovery plan would be to replace the current layer 2 switch another exact one with the same config. Down time wise may be 5 mins, as this is a SMB.

Outage wise we can accept about 10 mins, hardware is not an issue as we have lots of new layer 2 switches and routers to replace. I am in the process of drawing a floor plan, bare with me should be up in a bit

Current cabling: No current cabling

fredrikjj

The image is too small; can't read the text on it.

BloodSweatPings

Sorry , Not sure why it came out small

santaowns

where is the cabling going between the floors? is it by electrical lines? if so you will need shielded cat6 or fiber. Since you have such a small business yes 1 switch will work, ideally you would put 2 switches in for redundancy, if one died you just move them over to the other switch while its being replaced.

Iristheangel

I wouldnt necessarily put redundancy at the access layer but it all depends. Whats your budget? How much availability does this company require if a switch was to fail? Do they expect or is there a possibility of them expanding floors or getting more people? Depending on the answers to those questions, you may have to tweak your design a bit. There are also quite a few design guides on Ciscos site for small and medium branch design.

BloodSweatPings

santaowns wrote: »

where is the cabling going between the floors? is it by electrical lines? if so you will need shielded cat6 or fiber. Since you have such a small business yes 1 switch will work, ideally you would put 2 switches in for redundancy, if one died you just move them over to the other switch while its being replaced.

The cabling is going in above the suspended ceiling, We are using Cat 6 sheilded solid (cooper) best there is (Sort of).

initially the i was going to cable everything up from a 24 port fully manage switch to downstairs. It looks like we might expand and cabling everything from upstairs to downstairs does not seem like a viable option.

Looking to segregate each room or floor with one switch.

it_consultant

I regularly run cable from multiple floors to a single MDF. From a physical perspective the only time I break things into IDFs is if the runs are too long or we run out of room in the MDFs. I can see no advantage to segregating the floor with a separate switch when VLAN'ing is (and has been) acceptable practice for a long time. Sometimes this is impossible, say the bundle of fiber has to go up an elevator shaft or something and it can't have a thick bundle of CAT6 added to it, then 2 pair of fiber looks a lot better and you would need a separate switch. In your case, I think this isn't a concern.

earweed

Each floor having its' own switch is a good idea if expansion is likely to happen in the future. If possible have all the "outlets" look professional and have 2 wires to each pc access point for redundancy. I did a single building office like this a while back (about same number of offices but one 2 floor building) and ran all cabling through suspended ceilings and down (inside) walls. It was a pain doing it this way but looks better than running cables down the wall in a plastic/rubber channel.

BloodSweatPings

Iristheangel wrote: »

I wouldnt necessarily put redundancy at the access layer but it all depends. Whats your budget? How much availability does this company require if a switch was to fail? Do they expect or is there a possibility of them expanding floors or getting more people? Depending on the answers to those questions, you may have to tweak your design a bit. There are also quite a few design guides on Ciscos site for small and medium branch design.

Budget is low, but we need to get the job done. Since we are only just laying the physical cable we want to ensure that we dont need to do a lot of cable when we expand to a next unit, very similar to the current diagram, but an extra one on the left.

The company has a site to site VPN for a specific application, other than that everything else externally sourced, we just access the internet.

Thanks, just checked the cisco designs very basic, and straight forward

it_consultant

It is fairly simple to leave some copper lines open in the trunk line back to the MDF - in which case the new copper would only have to be run to the panel that all the other cable is run into.

This problem has been solved many times over. I have seen access layer switching where the cable combines 100 1 gig ports into not only one cable/conduit (that is easy) but 100 ports into one physical port. This requires special switches and cables but it demonstrates that cable density is an easy problem to overcome.

I am doing a similar roll-out where I have one MDF room and 2 idf rooms across a large open space - large enough to be outside the copper ethernet distance limit. If that was not a factor, I would wire everything to one room.

BloodSweatPings

it_consultant wrote: »

I regularly run cable from multiple floors to a single MDF. From a physical perspective the only time I break things into IDFs is if the runs are too long or we run out of room in the MDFs. I can see no advantage to segregating the floor with a separate switch when VLAN'ing is (and has been) acceptable practice for a long time. Sometimes this is impossible, say the bundle of fiber has to go up an elevator shaft or something and it can't have a thick bundle of CAT6 added to it, then 2 pair of fiber looks a lot better and you would need a separate switch. In your case, I think this isn't a concern.

Good point, I think the maximum length of the cables will be about conservative 25 meters. I think i will end up creating more work for my self.

BloodSweatPings

earweed wrote: »

Each floor having its' own switch is a good idea if expansion is likely to happen in the future. If possible have all the "outlets" look professional and have 2 wires to each pc access point for redundancy. I did a single building office like this a while back (about same number of offices but one 2 floor building) and ran all cabling through suspended ceilings and down (inside) walls. It was a pain doing it this way but looks better than running cables down the wall in a plastic/rubber channel.

Expansion is in the books but at the end of the day you can only have so many desks and PCs in one room.
2 wires to each access point ? you mean 2 rj45 ports on each wall socket, correct me if am wrong


is there anything i need to take into account when running cat6 sheilded solid copper over suspended ceilings? any advice tips ?

BloodSweatPings

it_consultant wrote: »

It is fairly simple to leave some copper lines open in the trunk line back to the MDF - in which case the new copper would only have to be run to the panel that all the other cable is run into.

This problem has been solved many times over. I have seen access layer switching where the cable combines 100 1 gig ports into not only one cable/conduit (that is easy) but 100 ports into one physical port. This requires special switches and cables but it demonstrates that cable density is an easy problem to overcome.

I am doing a similar roll-out where I have one MDF room and 2 idf rooms across a large open space - large enough to be outside the copper ethernet distance limit. If that was not a factor, I would wire everything to one room.

The first point, providing that i run cables from one switch, do mean just leave cables in the ceiling ready for the expansion and when the time comes just go ahead and start patching them up to the MDF. Then run the cables to the new location easily and just socket up (rj45) OR were you reffering to an IDF based network. sorry bit confusing

In the office general traffic tends to be email one site to site VPN and internet browsing. I doubt i need to segregate it and LACP it. When our new building which is directly attached to the current one comes into operation, i may install link aggregation on a switch and segregate it with a new switch.

deth1k

Do not try to over complicate things, if you know what the future growth is going to be and current budget allows you to spec for an additional switch for each floor then do it. Run fiber between the two floors which will save you some £ on running copper up and down.

it_consultant

BloodSweatPings wrote: »

The first point, providing that i run cables from one switch, do mean just leave cables in the ceiling ready for the expansion and when the time comes just go ahead and start patching them up to the MDF. Then run the cables to the new location easily and just socket up (rj45) OR were you reffering to an IDF based network. sorry bit confusing

In the office general traffic tends to be email one site to site VPN and internet browsing. I doubt i need to segregate it and LACP it. When our new building which is directly attached to the current one comes into operation, i may install link aggregation on a switch and segregate it with a new switch.

It would look like a normal patch panel in a closet, except without a switch. Put as many ports in there as you think you need and cable it back to your MDF (main distribution framework) closet with all the ports wired. They sell cables that can take 100,1000, etc links on back end of the patch panel. That way you can leave copper open but it will be nice and neat running through the conduit. It is similar to how you set up FC links, all your links go into a patch and the patch has a 100 pair trunk cable wired back to where your FC switches are. I personally hate huge bundles of cat6 cables so I prefer to use those special cables when I can. I wish I had a link to show you but normally I hire a professional cabling guy that takes care of it.

BloodSweatPings

Thanks everyone for the help, just finalising few things now, i will keep you guys updated

BloodSweatPings

Quick question : Do i need to get shelves for a cabinet if the switches are already 19" rack mountable switches ?