Do i need a router?

[Pointbreak]

Hi team,

I am new to the routing and switching field. So it would be great if u could clarify the part.

In a building i a planning to design a network .Say 50 computers and 25 voice end points at first floor, 30 PC and 20 voice endpoints at 2nd floor and 30 PC at third floor. My question is do i need a router here or it is fine if i connect all the servers and end points to switch altogether. 

[Aaron Harrison · Accepted solution]

Hi

You could certainly connect all the switches together and have a simple flat network. 

Typically for VoIP (especially if Cisco) you would have a seperate voice VLAN, with the phone/PC sharing a single switch port.

You would want to route between those VLANs, and for this you could use either:

1) A layer-3 switch

2) A router or firewall - e.g. if you have a router or firewall for WAN or Internet, use that to route between the VLANs.

You may even want to have seperate VLANs per floor, however given your level of experience and the size of your network I would not bother.

Aaron

[Joseph W. Doherty · Accepted solution]

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Posting

As a rough rule of thumb, you often don't need multiple subnets until the number of IP hosts cannot be contained by a /24 or /25.  What you've described falls within a /24, on the low side.

VoIP hosts do add a wrinkle, as you normally want to have them in their own subnet/VLAN, but with your number and kinds of hosts it's likely to still be okay.  VoIP subnet/VLAN requirements are also influenced by whether a VoIP device shares a port with a data host.  (It's generally "better", if the two devices share a port, for them to have their own VLANs.)

If you do decide to use multiple VLANs/subnets, most small "true" routers do not have the performance capacity for typical LAN bandwidths.  This is also true for many small firewalls too.  You would really want a L3 switch, which will add to your cost versus having just L2 switches.

If you need to go off-site, e.g. Internet access, for that you would want a small "true" router or firewall, but again, if you're going to do LAN routing, I would still recommend a L3 switch for that.