Designing a 500 user LAN

[bmerri19]

Greetings,

I am tasked with designing a 500 user LAN from the ground up. The general idea I have in mind is to divide the building into 5 workgroups of 100 users (a closet for each floor). Thinking of building around a backbone of some sort. Any ideas? How would you begin to break down this project?

Thanks,

Brian

[a.manosca]

The design guide below could be of help:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns110/ns146/ns147/ns17/networking_solutions_design_guidance09186a00800a386e.html

[mainesy]

Brian,

I'd have to say that I would need a little more info before any recommendations could be made. Here is some of the info I would need:

1. What type of traffic will be generated on the network?

2. What type of security requirements are needed?

3. How much redundancy and scalability do you want built in to the design?

4. Any WAN connectivity needed or is this already in place?

5. How far are the cabling distances on each floor?

6. Are you planning on using wireless at all?

If you can provide this info, I'd be more than happy to give you some ideas on what may suit your needs.

Josh

[davidhvoss]

Brian,

I think that nowadays you really need to look at the logical layout of the users on the LAN as much as you do the physical layout. If you have Finance on Floors 1 and 2, you may be doing them better service by placing them within the same VLAN. This is obviously a simple example, but I think you get the point.

Focus on who does what, who accesses what. Placing switches in the closets on each floor is a given, but how you program those switches will be the key to your success.

Read in depth about VLAN's, Broadcasts, Core/Distribution/Access Design. Where are your core switches going to reside? Are you going to consider L3 switches? The price of 3550's nowadays makes this compelling.

Unfortunately there is not much to go on with your post, but hopefully this input has helped you .

David Voss, CCIE 11372

Internetgineer.com