Thank you, I will definitely do that!
I'm so sorry, I'm just a math phd student, I'm a complete noob at this, and probably what I'm about to ask will be very stupid. I don't need to personally set this up, but I need to make the right purchases and physically put things in the right place:
My idea is to have the entire system be four 3802i APs, one 3560 CX-8XPD-S switch, and one Catalyst 9200L-24P-4G-A switch (each switch would have 2 APs connected to it). The 2 switches will be about 500 feet apart, connected via single mode fiber optic cables.
1) Can I connect the 2 switches by getting 2 SFP SM modules and plugging in the SM fiber into the SFP ports of both switches? Since they are both SFP uplinks, do I have to flip the order of the 2 LC connectors on the second switch?
The area where the 3560 CX switch (and its 2 APs) are will never be too crowded, but the area where the 9200L switch will occasionally be very crowded. I wanted want to get the 9200L to take advantage of its smarter routing. The problem is that the 3560 CX is the switch that is actually wired to the internet (because of its location) and I want the 3560 CX because it is fanless and that one spot is very noise sensitive.
2) Even though it is the 3560 CX that is physically wired to the internet (from ISP), is there a way to configure things so that the 9200L (with its smarter routing) is the master switch and makes the decisions? Does what I'm saying even make sense?
3) The internet from the ISP comes via a cat6 cable. Do I plug this into the 1st RJ-45 port of the 3560 CX switch?
My understanding is that connecting the switches via their SFP ports will make all 4 APs be on the same LAN network. At this point I would set up the free Cisco Mobility Express firmware on all 4 APs (in case of failure) and designate one of the APs as the master.
4) Now, at this point, with just the products listed above, can I make 7 VLAN networks, including some VLAN networks having all 4 APs (from both switches) on the VLAN network?
5) What's the max number of VLAN networks I can make?
6) What's the max number of VLAN networks one 3802i AP can be in (2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz)?
7) Can I make different SSIDs/passwords for the VLAN networks?
8) Can one of VLAN networks be a guest network where there is a guest portal that the guests are automatically sent to when they connect to the wifi SSID?
9) Is it ok that both the 3560 CX switch and the 9200L switch will both have some POE (APs) devices and some non-POE devices connected to their RJ-45 ports simultaneously?
Security is not the most important for this set-up (hence why I didn't think a router was necessary) but speed and reliability are.
I'm so sorry for such a long (and probably stupid) post! I would truly be deeply indebted if I could get some help!
Best Regards,
Steve
