I need a Switch

[g.e.bewick]

I am currently a student working on a project that has me designig a network for a small business. So I was hoping that someone could suggest what switch(s) I should use from the Cisco product line. I am going to need approximatley 285 ports split up between 5 floors. So I am thinking I am going to need a combination of 24 and 48 port switches. network is 100Mbps. Some of those ports are going to be for Voip, going to need VLAN. I am new to this so not sure what information you need exactly. I also need a a gateway router that can handle VoIP as well. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

gebewick

[g.e.bewick]

Can anyone help a struggling student?????????

[Kevin Tomomitsu · Accepted solution]

Let's see if I can be of some assistance. Can you answer a few questions first about this network you are designing?

1) What type of applications will be running over the network other than Voice?

2) What type of VOIP enabled PBX will you be deploying? (Manufacturer makes a difference since a lot of them use proprietary protocols)

3) Usually 258 ports call for more Enterprise level deployments, do you know how many LAN connections and Voice Connections per floor?

4) What type of uplinks will be required between the switches? Fiber or Copper? 1G or possibly 10G?

This should be enough to get started. Let me know if you have any questions.

[g.e.bewick]

Thank you for your response,

Here is the information I have scenario is somewhat generic and I am suppose to treat this as a business proposal. 5 floors top  floor executives  13 nodes and phones, 12 printers,  4th floor accounting 22 nodes and phones 11 printers, 3rd floor customer support 44 nodes and phones and 11 printers, 2nd floor Marketing and HR 22 nodes and phones 11 printers, 1st floor 13 nodes and phones 12 printers.

1. By application if you are asking about software no direction was given.

2. No PBX dictated or decided upon so any direction would also be appreciated

3 Please see above.

4. non specified up to me, any recommendations, But this is a proposal cost is a consideration, if fiber cost is significantly higher, and copper will handle the traffic... What are the cost diff. between 1G and 10G what is more reasonable for the theoretical amount of traffic this network will see.

Once again I really, really appreciate your help. I am very much on a learning curve here. If any of my answers need clarification please ask. I will attach a tentative diagram It does not include the VoIP connections and the Wi-FI is being removed so it is not a consideration

thank you,

G.E. Bewick

[Kevin Tomomitsu · Accepted solution]

Based on the requirements that you have provided it is highly recommended to go with more Enterprise Level

swicthes. Espesially based on the fact that we do not know what type of phones are getting deployed. The SMB switches can

only support 7.4W of PoE power to the phones on all 24 or 48 ports simultaneously.

Also based on the amount of users on each floor you will need a pretty robust Core Switch to perform the routing and switching funtions for this type of network. If your project requires that it be the Cisco SMB line swicthes then we can assist with a possible design but in real life this would not be ideal.

[g.e.bewick]

Can we just consider going with a Cisco Sip and associated equipment would that help in the determination or is there a better suggestion to work with Cisco product. You see this project is pretty wide open. One of the goals of this project is for me to do some research and come up with a system. Hence why I am here.  My project I believe does not require SMB, and if that is not ideal then what is.

And again, Thankyou for your time.

G.E.Bewick

[Kevin Tomomitsu · Accepted solution]

Assuming that the Core of the Network resides on the 1st floor using sinlge links no redundacny:

Enterprise Level Switches (Minimum):

1st Floor:

     1 - WS-C3560V2-48PS-S 48 Port PoE 15.4W PoE per port when only using 24 ports 7.4W per port if using all 48 ports. IP BASE Layer 3 capabilities (Static Routing), 4 Gigabit SFP Uplinks (One per floor)

2nd Floor:

     1 - WS-C2960S-48FPS-L switch which will provide 48 ports PoE (15.4W per port), 4 Gigabit SFP Uplink Ports, LAN Base Image (Layer 2 Only)

3rd Floor:

     2 - WS-C2960S-48FPS-L

4th Floor:

     1 - WS-C2960S-48FPS-L

5th Floor:

     1 - WS-C2960S-48FPS-L (24 ports required but 48 for future growth)

SFP's can come in copper or Fiber.

Recommendations seperate each floor into its own VLAN for Data Traffic (i.e. VLAN 50 = 5th floor, VLAN 40 = 4th floor), just to minimize the amount of traffic sent over the trunk links to each switch. Use the 3560 to perform Static Routing between the floors since they are on different VLAN's. Same Reccomendations would apply to the SMB switches below.

SMB Switches (Will work but not ideal):

1st Floor:

     1 - SF300-48P This switch provides 48 ports of PoE but only with 2 Combo GBIC ports for SFP (Fiber connectivity), however if there is no need for Fiber than the 4 Gigabit Ethernet ports will suffice for connections to the other switches. This swicth will only provide 7.4W PoE per port when all ports are in use. Per the Data Sheet it is Layer 3 capable using Static Routing. Queuing method for these switches for QOS is Strict Priority or Weighted Round Robin.

2nd Floor:

     1 - SF300-48P

3rd Floor:

     2 - SF300-48P

4th Floor:

     1 - SF300-48P

5th Floor:

     1 - SF300-48P

Probably more information than you needed. Hopefully this helps you with your project, let me know if you have any questions.

Kevin

[g.e.bewick]

Kevin,

Very nice. And I do have some questions (Please forgive my ignorance). Now with these two types of switches is this an either/or or are both types needed. Also you keep saying SMB is not optimal so then what is and why is it not optimal. It also does not seem to be enough ports if each set is an alternative if I were to use VOIP phone, I was under the impression these connected directly into the switches. Also I asked about using CISCO VoIP equipment is that taking into consideration here. Once again this is all great, Really appreciated.

Thanks

Gerard

[Kevin Tomomitsu · Accepted solution]

Don't worry about it I was the same way when I first started in this industry. The switches should provide you enough

ports. Most IP Phones now days have a built-in PC port on the back along with

a LAN port to connect to the switch. Essenstially what happens is the interfaces to the phones/pc's should be configured as 802.1Q trunk links, the voice VLAN will be tagged and the data VLAN will be untagged. When using Cisco Phone or in fact Polycom Phones, they support CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol) by default, so they will be placed in teh Voice VLAN uatomatically. Some other Vendors support LLDP-MED for Voice VLAN discovery and some just require manual configuration of the phone to tag traffic for the proper Voice VLAN. CDP is only supported on the Enterprise Level switches, the 300 series switches do not support this yet, this will be coming out in a new release in Q2 of this year.

The Enterprise gear is recommended because of the amount of users and switches. Usually we use SMB swicthes for small customers that range from 4 - 80 users (we only deploy 8 & 24 port 300 series switches). Anything above this we start using either Cisco ESW line swicthes or their 2960 series swicthes. Switching capacity and throughput is also something to take a look at, this depends on the type of applications and data that is being used on the network. Wth proper design the 300 series switches can be used but it will require a lot of thought into VLAN segmentation and where the bulk of the traffic is destined and or coming from. If cost is a concern then one idea would be to use the SMB swicthes at the Edge and get a more robust core switch like a 3560 or 3750 that can support more Gigabit SFP ports as uplinks. Each 300 series switch supports 2 SFP but 4 Gigabit Ethernet Links, if copper is used these can be combined into a LAG configuration to support more bandwidth. Hope this helps.

Kevin

[g.e.bewick]

Kevin,

Not trying to question, but on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th floors counting Computers, printers, phones each floor I believe will need respectively is 55, 99 and 55 ports. Am I going wrong somwhere. Also should All these switches tie into another switch as I have in my diagram or should they tie into the one you have suggested on the first floor along with my servers. Also do I need an IP PBX server. And is there a Cisco gateway router that could handle the VoIP as well as VPN and firewall duties? What would you suggest.

Thank you,

Gerard

[g.e.bewick]

Kevin,

The PC port on the phone, does that connect to the PC directly through USB?

[Kevin Tomomitsu · Accepted solution]

Sorry forgot to mention that the PC port on the back of the IP Phone is usually a 10/100/

1000 switch port. Essentially the Phone will plug into the PoE switch and

the PC into the back of the phone using only a single port on the switch.

I am downloading the Visio right now and will get back to you after viewing.

Kevin

[g.e.bewick]

Kevin,

If you are just looking at the diagram, I would like to reitereate that it does not show the phones. So you need to add one phone for each computer/node.

Thanks,

Gerard

[Kevin Tomomitsu]

Hi Gerard,

     I am having trouble downloading the visio from this site. I will try again later. But to your question on the firewall there are 2 routes we usually go with an ASA for security purposes and have a separate ISR for the connection to the PSTN for Voice. But with an IP enabled PBX you can terminate an IP Based SIP trunk direct from the service provider to the PBX. We usually provide an Enterprise Level SBC that acts as a demarcation point for the customer that provides both SIP trunnking to the PBX along with Internet to the customers firewall. This usually eliminates the need for an onsite ISR for  routing and PSTN access for Voice. I have also seen some deployments where the ISR is also the PBX in the case of a Communications Manager Express which I believe can now support close to 200 telsets. The ISR is like an all in one Router, IOS Based Firewall and VOIP PBX. Try this link below it will give you more information on the Cisco CME platform. I will get back to you once I take a look at the visio.

www.cisco.com/go/cucme

Kevin

[g.e.bewick]

Kevin,

resending diagram, hope this helps.

Thanks,

Gerard