Is L3 Switch for routing purposes really needed in this cases?

[chmod_net]

We have a Cisco ASA5516 Firewall running ASA Version 9.6(1) with Firepower and connecting to our ISP with 1Gbps. The firewall and iboss filter is at Location 1, the next hardware is C9300 Layer 3 Switch connecting to Location 2 L2 2960 switch and Location 3( L3 C3850). Also Location 1 has 2951 ISR router running cisco telephony and DHCP for Location 1&2 and wireless clients at all locations. Location 3 does DHCP with the 3850 switch. All Locations have L2 2960 distribution switches. Location 1 has Cisco 5520 Wireless Controller connecting to Location APs(AIR-AP1852 and AIR-CAP3702I) at all locations.
Location 1 has the main internet connection from isp and connecting to Location 2 and 3 with 1Gig fiber e-line, and soon to Location 4.
Location 2 and 3 each has camera servers and cameras. We also have a printer server at Location 1 connecting, managing printers at all locations. We are a public school We don't have any in house data center or anything. So users/staff/students traffic usually just goes to the internet and comes back.
How bad idea is it to not have routing at location 2? Cameras and the camera server are in vlan 26. For cameras to reach camera server, traffic just stays at location 2 correct? But if a wireless user needs to connect to Location 2 camera server from Location 2 the traffic has to traverse to Location 1 and back to Location 2.
In this case, do we even need L3 Switch at Location 3?

[Georg Pauwen]

Hello,

post a schematic drawing of your topology showing what is connected to what, at which location.

[chmod_net]

İ don't have it for now but the question is actually if we have routers at main location, do we really need routing at other locations?

[Georg Pauwen · Accepted solution]

Hello,

it really depends on how much inter-Vlan traffic there is. You could do all the routing at the main location. Any layer 3 (switch) device will mean a potential bottleneck. So the question is: how much traffic at each location needs to be routed ?

[chmod_net]

Got it. We don't really have too much inter vlan routing. Only to connect to cameras and camera servers İnter vlan routing might be used. And almost all rest of the traffic is for internet usage, so just being routed to isp.

Thank you for the reply btw.

[Joseph W. Doherty]

Whether you would much benefit from remote location local routing would depend on whether that location has east-west traffic.  I.e. traffic between hosts at that location, but which are in different networks.  Without local routing, the traffic needs to go to your hub site, to be routed, and redirected back to your remote site, adding traffic to your hub<>remote link and increasing latency between the remote site hosts.

Further, local routing also precludes remote site broadcasts (from ALL remote L2 networks) from transiting you hub<>remote link.  If such traffic is a small percentage of your link bandwidth, it's not generally a problem.