Which Switch and Router to choose?

[sskshea123]

I am interested in purchasing a Cisco Switch and Router, or possible a Cisco Switch Router.

However, I am not sure of what model to go with.

Currently, we have a network with about 200 Workstations and 30 Servers for our Corporation Infrastructure.

Also, for our lab, we have about 50 Linux Based Servers, and 30 Solaris Based Servers, that are part of our Network. We are a Research and Development Company, and we have had issues with the Lab machines bringing down our network, as well as our corporate network adversely affecting the lab machines. What we would like to do is segment the network so that the different areas will be isolated. However, we also would like to have a lot of control over the traffic that will be able to cross from our network into the lab so that users will still be able to run their tests.

Security is also an issue, and it would be great to have more control, and a better view of what kind of traffic is running through our network.

Currently, we have about 8 Gigabyte Switches which are unmanaged (Linksys and NetGear). Our idea was to get a 1 or 2 Cisco Switch Routers, and then split them up into VLANS and cascade our current switches so that we can still make use of them. The other ideas was to just get a Cisco Switch and use our CheckPoint Router/Firewall to do the routing.

Can you give me any advice as to what model of Cisco Product you would recommend?

Is it better to go with a Switch Router, or simply get a separate Switch and Router?

Please note that all of our Machines have 10/100/1000 NICs, so the device will need to be Gigabyte.

Thanks you so much!

[thisisshanky]

You have two choices. Either to use a chassis based solution or to use stacable switches such as a 3750. Are all the cat 5(or 5e,6) runs coming into one centralized location ? Or are there separate wiring closets that you plan to put. If then we need to put separate switches at those locations and run fiber back to the central location which has a chassis based or stackable switch.

If using a chassis based solution, you can get a 4506 (4507 for redundancy, with a redundant supervisor engine). Supervisor engine is nothing but the CPU of the switch. 4506 is a 6 slot modular switch with 2 power supplies for redundancy. You cannot add two Supervisor engines on a 4506 (4507 can).

Slot 1 is always for supervisor engine, the remaining 5 slots you can fill using 48 port 10/100/1000 modules.(48 * 5 = 240). So your maximum port density is 240 ports on a 4506. (Note that there are 4507, 4510 which are similar models with more slots)

If using 3750, you can stack upto 9 switches in a stack using stacking cables on the back side of the switch. Each switch will have 48 ports (10/100/1000) and you can stack 5 switches to get 240 ports.

For the firewall I would recommend using a PIX 515E, (Why go for Checkpoint firewall when you can use all Cisco). For routing between the vlans, the switches that I recommended above are all Layer 3 switches. They will route between the different vlans. You can also configure ACLs to restrict traffic between multiple vlans.

HTH