Books on networking best practice and layout

[MarcLister]

I am looking for books that would help me better understand the best practices to follow with network layout. I suspect that the network in the school I work for hasn't been designed or implemented in anything like a proper way and I would like some literature to read to help me see what problems the network has and what I can do to fix them and try to eliminate bottlenecks and make sure the school has a network that can be built upon in the future. I've already found: Ethernet Networks 4th Edition by Gilbert Held (ISBN-13 9780470844762 & ISBN-10 0470844760) and Ethernet: The Definitive Guide 2nd Edition by Charles Spurgeon & Joann Zimmerman (ISBN-13 9781449361846 & ISBN-10 1449361846).

Can anyone recommend any other books that would help me out so that I can prove to the powers that be that there are network layout problems and how they can be rectified?

 

[bigredshark]

Maybe beyond what you're looking for as a starter but the Cisco Optimal Routing Design book should be mandatory reading for anybody designing networks really...

 

[MarcLister]

That looks like a good start. Thanks. Do you know of any more books like that or would you recommend that one on its own?

 

[bitslice]

Coming in from that other thread,
if you draw your current network and listed the model names of the switches then people can advise.

Also, have a look at network sniffer tools, they can give an idea of network loading.

From your comments about the previous guy it sounds like he was equally budget constrained and may have compromised by buying any old tat to get it running.

 

[MarcLister]

Coming in from that other thread,
if you draw your current network and listed the model names of the switches then people can advise.

Will do.

Also, have a look at network sniffer tools, they can give an idea of network loading.

Was thinking of giving Wireshark a go. That do OK?

From your comments about the previous guy it sounds like he was equally budget constrained and may have compromised by buying any old tat to get it running.

I can't really agree with that having worked with him for over 3 years. His technical knowledge was quite low and I think he just did what he knew about and knew would work without really thinking about whether it was the right thing to do. He probably thought that a switch was a cheaper and easier solution to properly wiring rooms up so why waste money?

Before I took over in September the website for our school was atrocious. Truly and utterly atrocious. The design made it look like one of the best designed sites.... in 1995! The website was one of the few things my ex-boss never let me have any input in to at all because in his mind it worked, it was functional. Forget that it looked awful. He wouldn't have been able to accept that it was a poor design and looked old. Last year I found out that we were paying over £200 to a small one man company for what was effectively a very basic CMS. We were limited to how many pages we had on the website. My ex-boss once said that if we needed more we had to email the company owner and ask him to lift the limit.

In September I bought some hosting from Vidahost, downloaded Wordpress and bought a very nice, professional looking theme. The total cost is less than half of what we were paying and the website now looks cleaner and more modern and, I think, better represents us as a school. We get a discount on the hosting as a school and the Wordpress theme is only bought once so we have really got a good deal. My ex-boss always went for the first option, didn't care if it was the right option or whether it was the best financial option either.

So whilst we don't have a massive budget compared to other schools we haven't always, in my understanding, spent the ICT budget in the best way.

 

[anything I don't mind]

The benefit to wiring the school with one switch in each room and running one uplink cable to the server room would be that it reduces cable requirements. The downside is speed as you would be running all the classroom over 1 uplink to the main stack. The more common way would be to get network ports installed into the floors or walls and run patch cables through the roof or floors and up to a server room. But if the building is listed or does not have under floor space then you are limited to do that. But you should at least have a gigabit uplink from each switch in the classrooms and have full gigabit switches in the server room racks ideally a cisco switch stack where the bandwidth for the switches is shared across the stack. Then have any servers plugged in to the stack on their own gigabit cables. Depending on how many rooms you could probably get away with 1 cisco 48 port 3750 as a main stack.

 

[MarcLister]

The benefit to wiring the school with one switch in each room and running one uplink cable to the server room would be that it reduces cable requirements.

It does indeed.

The downside is speed as you would be running all the classroom over 1 uplink to the main stack.

It doesn't help that most of our wireless points that are in classrooms plug into the same 10/100 switches so when iPads get used in certain classrooms, the network speed must just drop so much so as to knacker the network speeds in that room.

The more common way would be to get network ports installed into the floors or walls and run patch cables through the roof or floors and up to a server room. But if the building is listed or does not have under floor space then you are limited to do that.

I would like to do network sockets and run them over the ceilings back to the local network cabinet.

But you should at least have a gigabit uplink from each switch in the classrooms

Unfortunately most, if not all, of the switches in the classrooms will be 10/100 and not 10/100/1000 which I think does limit us a lot.

and have full gigabit switches in the server room racks ideally a cisco switch stack where the bandwidth for the switches is shared across the stack.

Yep, our central network location has 2 Gigabit switches. Unfortunately one switch is only 10/100 and despite some re-arranging today, we still have a few devices plugged into the 10/100 switch.

Then have any servers plugged in to the stack on their own gigabit cables. Depending on how many rooms you could probably get away with 1 cisco 48 port 3750 as a main stack.

For some weird reason, one server is plugged into one cabinet, not the central one, and the other is plugged into the central cabinet. However to access the Internet, the server plugged into the central cabinet (which is our curriculum server, so for all students and most teachers) has to run off to the other cabinet (that the other server plugs into) because on the other side of the wall is our Internet connection cabinet. So any curriculum PC sends packets to the central cabinet location but then has to run off to another cabinet to access the Internet and then back to the central cabinet location again.

We are having a new building put up in the next year or so. Some of our network cabinets will have to move because where they are will be knocked down to make for a larger staff room. We now have to decide where to locate those cabinets and whilst my preferred option, having all both the servers in the central cabinet location, including our Internet cabinet, will cost more, I think it will be the better option. I just have to price up the work for external engineers and persuade my boss that I'm right!