Probably need more bandwidth and additional IP range.

[speckytecky]

Our current Fibre to the cabinet connection gives us 35mbps which seems ok for our existing network which has a total of some 200 mixed Windows and Apple clients but rarely sees over 50 devices active on the network at any time. We are a smallish KS3 Special school and have a Ruckus wireless network with 6 access points. Again this seems pretty adequate for present needs.

 

Come September it's planned that our phone system will be on the LAN plus we will be adding 50 student iPads and here's the crunch 28 networked CCTV cameras pushing our bandwidth requirement to so etching like 300mbps. Our existing SWGfL provided IP Range would no doubt also need to be added to I suppose. Any thoughts on the way to go would be much appreciated.

[MatthewL]

Are you going to be using the phone system and CCTV over the internet, if not how will this affect your internet?

[speckytecky]

Thanks @MatthewL Yes, that's the plan with the data from the CCTV being recorded in the server room.

 

Are you going to be using the phone system and CCTV over the internet, if not how will this affect your internet?

[Gardinho]

You will need a decent layer 3 switch and configure routing tables and VLANs.

 

I would have separate VLANs for voice, cctv, wifi and data.

 

EG

VLAN1 - Data

VLAN2 - Voice

VLAN3 - CCTV

VLAN4 - WiFi

 

You would need to tag the ports on the switches that the APs are physically connected to with the Wireless VLAN - VLAN4. Configure the Ruckus Controller to dish out addresses on VLAN4.

 

You would also need to tag the other physical ports for your cctv and phones. Will the cameras, phone handsets and WiFi all be powered with POE switches?

 

You will have to have logical cabling and detailed documentation of your network to get this project to work.

 

My experience of VoIP is that you'd need a network device that would be able to traffic shape, or your phone system will fall over the minute someone tries to download a large file (think 5GB iso).

 

To be honest, what you're trying to achieve is doable but you need to have the right kit and relevant experience to be able to implement it. You will be saturating the Internet connection, and I'd be very wary of putting that much dependance on the network.

 

If you figure out a better way to do it I'd love to hear about it. Very interesting project!

Edited April 28, 2014 by Gardinho

[plexer]

But why will your CCTV be traversing the internet?

 

Ben

[speckytecky]

I know not why Ben but apparently that's the way it goes nowadays. Being a pretty costly project we are having to get at least 3 quotes and it's the LAN (not actual Internet) that they are all telling us is now standard practice to use.

 

But why will your CCTV be traversing the internet?

 

Ben

[plexer]

I can understand your CCTV being over ip but that will have in impact on your internet bandwidth requirements.

 

Ben

[IrritableTech]

Is your CCTV planned to be monitored remotely by a control centre perhaps? If so, it's likely to only be monitored when nobody else is in the building, so I wouldn't worry too much about it's bandwidth.

 

Our 450 machines average around 35-45Mbit/s but we do peak at about 80-90Mbit/s three or four times a day. I can imagine your FTTC connection is enough, but doesn't much wiggle room. If you are looking at using your net connection for telephone calls - I think you'll struggle with quality whilst leaving bandwidth for your machines.

 

VLAN'ing things off is a good idea if you have the equipment, or the budget. However again, the links between our voice switches carrying 65 handsets rarely sees much more than 100-150kbps at any one time. I've seen successful implementations of voip and curriculum traffic on a single flat lan, with no noticeable loss of quality.

 

On the additonal IP's - your CCTV might only need a handful of addresses, and your voip system can probably be in a separate private range that never touches the SWGfL. Say your SWGfL range is 10.1.2.0/22 your phones could be 192.168.0.0/24 as long as they don't require net access? Could depend on how your support is supplied to the system though.

Edited April 29, 2014 by IrritableTech

[Gardinho]

VLAN'ing things off is a good idea if you have the equipment, or the budget. However again, the links between our voice switches carrying 65 handsets rarely sees much more than 100-150kbps at any one time. I've seen successful implementations of voip and curriculum traffic on a single flat lan, with no noticeable loss of quality.

 

Is it not worth it for security purposes too?

[cpjitservices]

If your Phone system is going to be on your LAN make sure you put it on it's own VLAN.

[IrritableTech]

Is it not worth it for security purposes too?

 

It gives some protection yes, but it is possible to VLAN hop. It's not to be relied upon as secure I've always been led to believe. It is extremely unlikely that someone is going to be able to capture all the packets of a conversation on a switched network (unless by some freak of luck they happen to get a mirrored port) and rebuild the audio. If you use the same range for your voip as your curriculum machines there is a chance someone could try and helpfully reconfigure it for you though I guess - but this is where standard security management should be practised.

 

VLAN if you can yes, absolutely - but it doesn't have to be if it's beyond your equipment, budget or expertise.

[Gardinho]

It gives some protection yes, but it is possible to VLAN hop. It's not to be relied upon as secure I've always been led to believe. It is extremely unlikely that someone is going to be able to capture all the packets of a conversation on a switched network (unless by some freak of luck they happen to get a mirrored port) and rebuild the audio. If you use the same range for your voip as your curriculum machines there is a chance someone could try and helpfully reconfigure it for you though I guess - but this is where standard security management should be practised.

 

VLAN if you can yes, absolutely - but it doesn't have to be if it's beyond your equipment, budget or expertise.

 

I would still be very wary about putting that many services on a 35MBps internet line. How many users are you talking @speckytechy?

 

One thing to note is that VoIP is a completely different animal in terms of configuration and maintenance. I think it's not a job to undertake on your own. If you run into any problems on your network, you will not be able to make internal or external calls. Are you protected from loops etc with STP? Network, CCTV and Voip a lot of responsibility for a small IT Dept. I'd be tempted to outsource some of it.

[speckytecky]

We aren't big. 70 students 35 FTE staff.

 

I would still be very wary about putting that many services on a 35MBps internet line. How many users are you talking @speckytechy?

 

One thing to note is that VoIP is a completely different animal in terms of configuration and maintenance. I think it's not a job to undertake on your own. If you run into any problems on your network, you will not be able to make internal or external calls. Are you protected from loops etc with STP? Network, CCTV and Voip a lot of responsibility for a small IT Dept. I'd be tempted to outsource some of it.