Reading suggestions to determine necessary equipment

[menestrello]

Hello,

Our teacher assigned a case project to us in the CCNA curriculum, essentially to get us to think and put something practical together.  At this point, I have the network requirements setup in a lab environment; however, selection of equipment is an aspect we have not touched on (and probably won't).  We are allowed to use material outside of the CCNA curriculum and I have done so (ex. HSRP, VOIP, SLAs, EtherChannel, 802.1x, Linux/MS servers).

What I am looking for are some resources that I can read or learn from to determine what hardware is necessary / realistic to use in a given environment.  I haven't mentioned what the scope of the network is or what requirements we have since I want to learn it, not ask someone to do it for me.

For example, while I can compare switch models, I would like to know specifics on what each can realistically handle.

Thank you in advance!

[vmiller]

Start with:

1 how many users need to be supported day 1.

2 what applications need to be supported day 1.

3. where are the users relative to their apps? (local, remote, geo diversity)

4 what features do i need to support, and when

How do we carve up the user community? by floor & then by building ... this give us an idea of our access layer.

How may remote locations, how do i connect them ?

you could spend a long time on data center design, but lets use a simple case,

how many host servers, do i build a seperate server farm ?

draw that out, and it gives you a very rough starting point.

for example, if i have branches with 70 people on 2 floors, i should standardize on what switch and what rotuer to support them... and so on...

[menestrello]

Thank you for the response.

I believe I know most of the answers to the above questions, unless I should decide to change my mind on something.

Let's say for example that I know how many switches I need at the access layer and what would be capable there, but am not sure how many (or how powerful) of disribution layer switches I need to support a decent quantity of users.

• I know the feature sets I need and have a list of switches that support those features.
• I know how much bandwidth to expect on that layer.
• There are different levels per-se of these devices, however.

Some of what I don't know is::

• How concerned I should be with things such as switching speed and other details that I do not see described online.
• If a switch supports 48GB/s of throughput (not 48 1GB ports, I know there's a difference), how do I know how much data can actually be thrown at it consistently.

Those are examples of what I would like to get a better handle on.

I don't want to do this ,just to get a grade -- I want to get as much out of it as I can.

Thank you again.

[vmiller · Accepted solution]

to your first points, you have half the battle won. Personally I tend to prefer Chassis based Distribution when possible. easier to add line cards.

As far as switching speeds, faster is better, keeping in mind whatever "results" you see posted are under pretty tightly controlled conditions, designed to make the device look good. The level of swtich that one would consider for distribiution all generally have good performance, my concerns would be modularity, & features. Distribution tends (but not always) to do the heavy lifting.

here is a decent guide on performance.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/switches/ps5718/ps708/networking_solutions_products_genericcontent0900aecd805f0955.pdf

Also, do a search on cisco.com for design zone. there are some very good docs in there depending on what you need.