VLANs and Bandwidth

[dj214]

Hello All:

Just a couple of questions to help clarify a few things. Right now we have a flat lan with user environment on 2nd floor and server room on the 1st floor. Switched environment with HP and CISCO mix.

Bandwidth between server room and upstairs user community is becoming an issue. Alot of SQL stuff going on with a ton of data going between the 2 floors. I see bandwidth on VLAN1 reaching sometimes 80-90%.

The link between the 2 floors naturally is also getting hammered.

My questions:

If I segmented the network with several VLANS and distributing the heavy users amongst amongst the VLANS - It seems this would help. I should see the bandwidth crunch spread between the VLANS? Is this thinking correct?

Also - each port on the switch is 100m. How do you calculate backplane bandwidth on the switch? Is it possible to bury this?

Thanks

[glen.grant]

your thinking is correct and it would also break up the broadcast domain and cut down on that traffic also . Not an easy way to calculate bandwidth you really have to look at the specs for the switch and usually there is a command that will give you backplane utilization . How are you seeing the vlan at 80-90% ?

[dj214]

Thanks - HP has onboard monitoring and also using 3rd party software which shows default VLAN running 80-90 % during peak traffic periods.

There will be a need to do something in the very near future to address this. Looks like a little redesign is in order.