Network configuration

[Roger Richards]

Good day,

My question relates to congestion, latency, high packet loss. Have a network with 7 switches, all link by cat5 trunk ports. Out of the 7, 3 is POE for phones. The main switch which is considered the VTP domain is where all the others are linked to via a cat 5 cable. Will this setup cause high packet loss, latency etc. Should I use fiber? 

[Roberto Kippins · Accepted solution]

Roger,

You need to look at the applications and traffic types that will be traversing the network before you can answer that question, based on the topology you posted the network may experience congestion because all the switches are daisy-chained together, Cisco recommends using a layered hierarchical design, check this article to get a better understanding: http://www.ciscopress.com/articles/article.asp?p=2202410&seqNum=4