network setup

[choisam77]

hi. i have earlier post asking what router and switch to get. with the help, i got 1841 router with one t1 interface card and catalyst 500 for switch. i'm having problem with installing. right now i have one t1 point to point and one cable internet. i have conneted one t1 point to point to a router and one cable internet to switch. i was reading the manual for the switch and i'm very confused. here is what i need to do. my company is in business of buying and selling stock. there is two part to that, executing order and researching. every computers will be using t1 point to point for execution only. every computer will use cable internet for researching and regular web browsing. in short, t1 for execution only and cable for rest. here is what i'm confused about. since cable internet is going to be connect to the switch, how would i configure the switch so that execution order goes to router and to t1, and researching and regular internet traffic goes from switch to cable internet? i was reading the manual for the switch and it has no feature for routing the traffic. i'm guessing if i can't setup the switch to route the traffic, execution will go to either t1 or cable, and researching and regular internt to either t1 or cable. i need t1 just for execution only. how would i set it up. do i buy another interface card for router that can connect cable internet? should i change the switch that can handle that if my current switch can't do it? in future, i'm planning on adding another t1 to my router for exection and there is only two slots available so i rather get new switch. can anyone please help me on this? thanks

[jarathbu]

Hello,

If you route all your traffic from the hosts to the 1841 you can then setup specific routes for the traffic pointing towards the T1 interface and point a 0.0.0.0 route to the cable interface. If traffic is more granular you may choose some policy routing or a security (CBAC) solution on the 1841.

The switch will not be able to make any similar forwarding decisions.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

James

[choisam77]

thanks for your help. i do understand that if i connect t1 point to point and cable internet directly to router, i can route the traffic using setting from the router. but i want to leave one modular spot(only 2 available for this router) available for future expansion(another t1 point to point). with that in mind, i figure i can connet cable internet to switch directly instead of connecting directly to router. so question again is, is that possible with my current switch(switch routing traffic to cable internet and to t1 through router)? if not, what switch should i get? i was looking at catalyst 2960 switch. is that switch capable of routing traffic to cable internet and t1 through router? for 2960, layer is 3 compare to 500 which is layer 2. is that what i needed? so confusing... also, is there interface card for cable internet for 1841 router? if so, can i have some info like model number? thanks.