suitable switch

[mpalmer123]

Hi,
I have 80 users over 2 floors which will likely expand to 135 users in next 3years. We are using 100Mbps cabling and I am not sure on how the speed to the users drop from the switch depending on the users?

Matthew Palmer.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

You most likely uplink the switches using one cable? With a lot of users on each floor...yeah, that single 100 meg connection is possibly getting hit pretty hard...depending on what you do on your network. I'd think about some switches that have a gig port...uplink the switches using giga, even a fiber run depending on your distance.

 

[skidmarq]

Don't really understand the question by reading your original note, but it is probably just me...

Do you have individual racks on each floor or are all the cable runs "home run"?

How many switches are you looking to purchase? How are they currently connected now?

 

[mpalmer123]

Hi,
Thanks for the reply the question could have been put a bit more clearer:
we are looking at cat6 for the backbone and cat5e for the horizontal cabling\drop-offs to the users. Given the possible expansion we don't want to be in the position of replacing all the switches so initially we are looking at one 49 port and two 32 port switches.

We have two rooms of 13 users is the best idea to place a single 32port switch in one room and uplink this to one of the main switches?

I will be grateful for any information received,

Matthew Palmer.

 

[atomiser]

for your current user count and premises taking into consideration the growth you have indicated, here's what i would do...

dedicate space on each floor of the building. preferably locked rooms so that at least basic physical security is covered.

wire each floor back to the dedicated room. if you have the budget for cat6 then use it, if not then there is nothing wrong with cat5e. you can do 10/100 up to 100 metres with cat5e. gig is supposed to work but i dont think i would be comfortable running it that distance over copper.

wire between the rooms. try and go with fibre if possible. if budget is a problem then copper should be ok. if you end up using copper, stay with the same standard that you use for the drops. i wouldn't recommend mixing different standards of copper throughout a building!

have a dedicated switch in each computer room. preferably 10/100/1000 with a mixture of copper, fibre and module/gbic slots.

just stick with 24 port 10/100 switches for the users, but get them with module/gbic slots so you can uplink them at gig to the central switches

place servers in the most appropriate places.

hope this helps!