Network Design

[jamoor]

I am trying to figure out the best way to design a network. It's not bandwidth intensive (less than 10 pcs and 10 voip phones).

We have an upstairs office with 8 users and a warehouse downstairs with 2 users.

At the moment we have a switch and patch panel upstairs, all of the PCs go into a gigabit switch. One lan cable from the switch goes to the warehouse that goes into a cheap TP-Link switch and to the two PCS.

We are moving some stuff around in the office and due to various bits of furniture and flooring, it's easier for us to supply networking to half the PCs from the warehouse (drill up through the floor and put lan sockets in the floor). My question is, what is the best way to manage this.

I was thinking to put a patch panel downstairs and run the 4 lan sockets from upstairs and the warehouse pcs to the downstairs patch panel and into a switch that is connected by Lan cable to the one upstairs.

Is this a good network design? I am just a bit concerned about the fact that the warehouse and half of the upstairs pcs would be reliant on the single port of the switch that comes from the upstairs switch? Or should I be ok as its not like it's feeding 50 users only 6, we can't see that growing a great deal either.

Thanks.

 

[jamoor]

This is the setup, essentially the second switch on the left doesn't exist and that's what I am trying to add. But by the sounds of it I should be ok. Running everything to one location isn't so easy as we need to have some sockets in the floor (easier to cut laminate floor then drill down than bring it all up to lay cables).

 

[jamoor]

You need to consider expansion, not just what you already have. Get it right first time. Plan for extra workstations and servers. And if you're planning for the future, you'll use 10 Gb links.



I suggest you run all switches directly from the router. In your case you'll therefore need three switches: two for the office and one for the warehouse. This will also enable you to segregate the warehouse network from the office network should the need arise.

Now, if you want to add some resilience to the network then you can go two ways: buy expensive kit or buy spares which you can just plug in.

Well I don't have any servers anwyay, I can plan some capacity, but if we have many more workstations then we will be moving buildings anyway so there's only so much we can do.