Connecting 2 sites?

The_KiD

The_KiD

The_KiD

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We have 3 sites very close to each other (all 3 within a 100 meters of each other), but all are different buildings.

Site A is the Head Office (150 PC's)
Site B is a branch (5 PC's)
Site C is the old head office (Unknown)

Currently I have put a large switch in the upstairs of site B and linked it to site A with a normal cat5 cable (10/100). This is ok because there will never be a large amount oc PC's in site B

However they now want to put some departments in to Site C, this will be 5 or 6 PC's inititally however it could expand to 50 or so.

What is the best waqy of connecting it to the Site A network? Put another switch in Site C and just use cat5 (10/100) again?

If I put 2 cables between the sites is that better?
 
In an ideal world connect all 3 sites on a fibre ring as that gives far superior performance and upgrade capabilities. This depends on whether you can get approval to dig trenches between and of course the cost implications.
Once in place you could have a gigabit LAN that is easily upgradable when the need arises.
 
You can run GigE over copper over the distances you are talking about, forget fibre too expensive!

Obviously you could look at wireless, some of the new kit is fairly rapid but you would obviously need to make sure it locked down well in terms of security (I'm not really a wireless fan TBH).

HEADRAT
 
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pdw8 said:
In an ideal world connect all 3 sites on a fibre ring as that gives far superior performance and upgrade capabilities. This depends on whether you can get approval to dig trenches between and of course the cost implications.
Once in place you could have a gigabit LAN that is easily upgradable when the need arises.
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In an ideal world yes that would be sweet, however lets "pretend" that the company are tight wads and dont get that spending money now, may save them in the long term.
 
HEADRAT said:
Cat 5e, you don't need fibre over such short distances!
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I disagree, sorry.

and if lightning strikes one building, there will be a voltage difference relative to the the other building, and you could end up with blown kit. (It does happen)

Inter building network links should always be done with fibre.

The cost is all in the installation, 100m of fibre costs nothing, and if you have capable switches at either end (which you should have because this is a strategic issue) then the cost of fibre GBICs is minimal.
 
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Well if there was a lightening strike and all the sites are within 100m I think they'd be toast anyway due to power cables, phone lines etc running into the buildings!



HEADRAT
 
bitslice said:
I disagree, sorry.

and if lightning strikes one building, there will be a voltage difference relative to the the other building, and you could end up with blown kit. (It does happen)

.
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Quoted for truth, it has happened to me, luckily with relatively inexpensive bits of kit.
 
1000BaseTX is quoted to max out nearer 75M (striaght line) and will degrade further with each connection.
 
HEADRAT said:
Well if there was a lightening strike and all the sites are within 100m I think they'd be toast anyway due to power cables, phone lines etc running into the buildings!
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:confused:

No, this doesn't happen as they are all earthed relative to the building or their source


An inter-buiilding network cable is floating, and isn't designed to carry the voltage differential between buildings. Large voltages can be induced onto the cable and blow out the switch transceivers

This does happen, the previous admin blew loads of site bridges until I replaced the existing link with fibre.

If you have remote sites this is an issue from day 1, and so the choice of network kit should be fibre capable.
 
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bitslice said:
An inter-buiilding network cable is floating, and isn't designed to carry the voltage differential between buildings. Large voltages can be induced onto the cable and blow out the switch transceivers
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Very interesting, thanks sharing your knowledge :)

HEADRAT
 
The_KiD said:
Eeek is that true?
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Yes...and Cat5e will degrade a lot after 90m on lower speeds anyway....also, is the 100m a measured "this is the real cable distance" or is it "line of sight"?

You could use repeaters...but I'd just go for fibre. Hardly too expensive, and has lots of aforementioned benefits :)
 
ok what sort of money am I looking at for 2 X 24 Port gigabit switches?

Also is it a different type of cable for 1000TX rather than 10/100 ?
 
The_KiD said:
We have 3 sites very close to each other (all 3 within a 100 meters of each other), but all are different buildings.

Site A is the Head Office (150 PC's)
Site B is a branch (5 PC's)
Site C is the old head office (Unknown)

Currently I have put a large switch in the upstairs of site B and linked it to site A with a normal cat5 cable (10/100). This is ok because there will never be a large amount oc PC's in site B

However they now want to put some departments in to Site C, this will be 5 or 6 PC's inititally however it could expand to 50 or so.

What is the best waqy of connecting it to the Site A network? Put another switch in Site C and just use cat5 (10/100) again?

If I put 2 cables between the sites is that better?
Click to expand...

Stop asking people to do your homework. What you asking guys on ocuk forum for lol? Read up on it like everyone else.
 
you don't need 2x24 port gigabit switches unless you want to run gigabit to the desktop. A couple 10/100 HP procurves(2650's?) would be ideal. These are 48port and have 4 gig transceivers(2 gbic/2 cat5e - only 2 can be used at one time.

What you have to consider as well is if your going where all your traffic is travelling? Are servers located at A/B/C? If at A and its connected A----B----C then your going to have all clients from B and C going down 1 link to A. If you can't move your servers and its too long to run cat5e between A and C then it would be advisable to use fibre.
 
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