Network

[tony85wild]

Hi,

 

I would like some advice on our network. We are a large primary school and have 3 network cabinets. The school was originally split. The 3 cabs are connected by fibre.

The first cab has 1x HP 2620-24-PoEP Switch and 2x HP 2620-24-PoEP Switches. The second cab has 1x HP 2620-24-PoEP Switch and the third has 1x HP 2620-24-PoEP Switch.

 

We have 22 Aerohive APs and 20 CCTV cameras. The school server is a Synology NAS that teachers connect to on a daily bases and this also runs the cameras through Surveillance station.

 

My question is: what is the best possible way for the 3x switches to be connect to each other in the first cabinet and do you think I should be layering the switches for the security cameras etc?

 

If anyone has any advice on making our network run as well as it can then I am all ears.

 

Thank you.

[nathan3388]

Is your network running slow if it was me then i would run the cctv on a separate Vlan and a separate upload port if you have spare fibre's to the cabients. It all depends if the cameras are plugged into to if it one cabinet then i would just vlan the switches in that cabient and to the server. how many computers, laptops, ipad you talking on the network to?

[tony85wild]

Hi Nathan3388, thank you for the response.

The newtwork does seem to be running slow. The cameras are plugged into different switches round the school.

We currently have 130 iPads and 45 laptops. Normally the 90 pupil iPads will be running at the same time too. We then have 40-50 desktop machines.

[nathan3388]

I would defo try separate the Cctv cameras onto a different vlan and if possible try to separate onto a different upload port as well as you will notice massive improvement. Do you view the Cctv anywhere in school or is there a specific person that views the footage, if that is the case then I would assume it is on the main school network. If thay is e case you would have to configure them ports to allow it though to access the cameras . Cctv broadcast and steam a lot of video with is a massive strain on the network to. We installed a separate Cctv network from the main school network because of the high traffic. I am assuming that all the switches are on a 1gb backbone??

[AlanD]

I would want at least 2x fibre connections between cabinets...and I’d be looking to put them as a virtual stack...but maybe those switches don’t support that. But I guess they support LAGs so that would give you increased badwidth capacity and redundancy..a double win. And yes I would segregate cctv onto a separate vlan...especially if there is any kind of remote monitoring...because I wouldn’t want any external acccess to where my data is...GDPR and all that... vlans wouldn’t increase your band width of course..but you might make it less of a priority.

 

If you are implying that your network is slow...you need to look at the traffic logs. Often what is described as a slow network...especially by users ...is slow wireless...or slow PCs..or slow sata discs used in a server rather than 10k sas ones.

 

Take care that spending money on network infrastructure isn’t the problem that needs solving.

[Norphy]

Isn’t the 2620 series of switches somewhat on the old side? Iirc, they’re 10/100 switches, maybe with gigabit uplinks. If you’re stuffing your edge, WiFi, voice and cctv down that, performance could suffer.

[NDEJosh]

Isn’t the 2620 series of switches somewhat on the old side? Iirc, they’re 10/100 switches, maybe with gigabit uplinks. If you’re stuffing your edge, WiFi, voice and cctv down that, performance could suffer.

 

Yep, they are as far as I am aware.

 

I don't think it's helping having a lot of stuff going back to a Synology NAS. What spec is this NAS, what sort of uplink has the NAS got?

 

You should splt the CCTV onto a specific NVR, locate this in your main comms room.

 

Split your Wi-Fi to a VLAN.

Split your CCTV to a VLAN.