Small Town Fiber Network Design Suggestions

[jcleary]

Hello, I am working for a small town who has just installed fiber between all of their town offices and properties, Less than 10 sites in all.

Just a quick question,

All of the sites need access back to the main building, They dont nessescarilly need access to each other but they may in the future for VOIP,

Do you guys recommend Building this as a Layer2 network, Layer 3 switch in the core with vlans for each building then trunking to the building's switch and putting all ports in that vlan?

Or maybe make it all layer 3 and treat the fiber connections as leased lines and IP each end and route all the traffic?

do you guys have any thoughts either way?

Thanks

[Reza Sharifi]

Hi,

It depends on the type and the capability of equipment and the number of devices you have per location.  If you have for example 125 end devices in each location and your equipment is capable of routing, than you can keep the vlans local by assigning /24 to each location and run layer-3 between the locations.  If your equipment is not capable of doing layer-3 and you need layer-2 connectivity between locations than you can do layer-2.I usually prefer layer-3 solution.  That would eliminate running STP.

HTH

[Leo Laohoo]

Do you guys recommend Building this as a Layer2 network, Layer 3 switch in the core with vlans for each building then trunking to the building's switch and putting all ports in that vlan?

I'm going to take the comment about the "small town" out of the equation because it's irrelevant.

Whether or not you should run Layer 2 or Layer 3 uplinks will depend on alot of factors.  I agree with Reza, though.

If you have the budget then it's best to treat each site as a Layer 3 site.  Heck, if you have the funds, MPLS each site.