Opinions on a Switch and Router Solution for a Small Network

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KarFai

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 14, 2001
Messages
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Hi all,

I'm currently looking for some opinions on a particular switch. To give some back story, we are installing a new ethernet network in my fraternity house, and we have tapped a wiring company to run all of our cables (19 rooms, 3 ports each, plus 2 extra ports, 59 total) So I need to find 1 48 port switch, and a 12 port switch. For the 48 I've been looking at this, given it's cost

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1141459

I haven't really looked at a 12 port switch yet, or a router. We don't need anything really advanced, not even a firewall on the router even. Or maybe even 3 24 port switches instead of a 48 and a 12.

Looking to stay under $1000 on this, as the wiring is already costing about $6,000.

Any help would be appreciated.
 
i would recommend the 3x24 port setup using the hp procurve line of switches. for a router the linksys rv line of routers are often recommended on here. do you need to do any content filtering? if so then maybe drop the router in favour of picking up a s/h 1u server and running endian instead.
 
I was thinking maybe doing a 3 x Procurve 2124's any thoughts on those?

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/specs.aspx?EDC=318639

Don't really need any type of content filtering or qos, just a simple router to provide DHCP services to our computers, don't even really need a firewall.

Also, it's been a while since I've done something like this, I assume I could just daisy chain the switches together? Would I be correct to assume this?

Thanks again for all the help.
 
ive not used the 2124's, my experience has mainly been with the 2324's and the 2524's which, in my opinion, are excellent switches. similar switches to the 2124's but an additional expansion slot and a higher capacity backplane. given that hp products are lifetime warranty you may be able to pick up some recon units from ebay for a lot cheaper than you would brand new. the router you end up with will have a multi-port switch built into it, i would just chain each procurve off that. trust me, you definately do need a firewall!
 
KarFai said:
I was thinking maybe doing a 3 x Procurve 2124's any thoughts on those?

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/specs.aspx?EDC=318639

Don't really need any type of content filtering or qos, just a simple router to provide DHCP services to our computers, don't even really need a firewall.

Also, it's been a while since I've done something like this, I assume I could just daisy chain the switches together? Would I be correct to assume this?

Thanks again for all the help.
Click to expand...


I own a 2124 and it's a great switch for simple network use. I would advise against daisy chaining them though. I would connect two of them to the same switch as the router. If the router is a "home" type box, where it has a built-in switch, Atomiser has the right idea in connecting each of the 2124s to a different port on the router.
 
Are you wanting to stay in the 100Bbs range and not gigabit? If you were doing gigabit I would also recommend HP's ProCurve series. If you only doing 100Mbs you could pick up 3 LinkSys' SR224R 24-port switches.

As far as configuring, put all 3 switches on top of one another and run 2 cables connecting 1 & 2 together, and 2 & 3 together. Then connect the WAN port of your router to your DSL/Cable modem, and connect one of the ethernet ports to one of the ports on one of the switches. The DHCP will assign addresses across your network and the router will handle all Internet traffic. Again, as the prior poster mentioned, a LinkSys router will work fine.

Now, having said this, each computer will be able to see every other computer on the network unless you set each computer up for this not to happen.

Is your cable company going to do patch panels or are you planning on running the cable directly to the switches? What type of cable are they running - CAT5, CAT5e, CAT6?
 
We are going to be running Cat 5e, maybe 6 depending (looking at a 20% cost difference give or take), they will be terminated into a rack mounted patch panel. I would then like to mount the 3 Procurve switches, along with a small shelf to hold the router and DSL modem.

On that note, any idea on a rack size? Also I've noticed that these switches don't come with mounting equipment (unless I misread the specs) any idea on where i can get the mounting hardware for these?

I will most likely run a cable from each switch to the router.

We aren't too interested in Gigabit, mainly due to there isn't much reason to, as most of our users will not have gigabit on their computers, and that this is mostly for college students in a fraternity house, most of which aren't really all that knowledgable about computers. If we had more knowledgable people, we would consider a file server for shared storage and things of that nature, but frankly our users are too stupid to understand that.
 
I'll come wire it for 3k, I accept cash only. It'll give you 3k more to spend on switches.:)
 
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