Network Infrastructure Question

[SeanVin]

We have fibre links between buildings and mixture of 1gb/100mb switches. I don’t see the point of running 1gb to the desktop if you only have 1gb uplinks.

 

We have some Cat 6 cable that was installed before my time with cat 5 plugs! I’ve never had a problem with 1gb over Cat 5e which is a lot cheaper and easier to handle.

 

I would love to go to a 10gb back bone, the press have been saying it will become affordable in 12 months for the last 3 years!

[Ste_Harve]

We're running 100mb/s to desktops with a few select machines running at 1gb/s. These machiens are used by me.

 

All our servers have teamed nics putting out either 2x1gb/s or 4x1gb/s into the 5406zl switch. This is then link to all the department switches and other buildings. All buildings are linked using fibre, and ports are trunked to 2gb/s and 1 3gb/s for biggest building. Our IT suite, 4 procurve 2650's are all linked to the 5406zl using 2gb/s trunks each. All switches are linked in at either 1gb/s or 2gb/s trunks.

 

All internal links are using cat5e while fibre conenctions are using OM2 fibre.

[dave.81]

We're running 100mb/s to desktops with a few select machines running at 1gb/s. These machiens are used by me.

 

All our servers have teamed nics putting out either 2x1gb/s or 4x1gb/s into the 5406zl switch. This is then link to all the department switches and other buildings. All buildings are linked using fibre, and ports are trunked to 2gb/s and 1 3gb/s for biggest building. Our IT suite, 4 procurve 2650's are all linked to the 5406zl using 2gb/s trunks each. All switches are linked in at either 1gb/s or 2gb/s trunks.

 

All internal links are using cat5e while fibre conenctions are using OM2 fibre.

 

 

Sounds like the same plan i have for our system over the summer

[maniac]

We have a right old mixture here.

 

All our main cabinets are linked via 1GB uplinks directly back to the core switch, the exceptions are two, one which serves a large cunk of one building which has a 3GBs trunk to the core switch. That then distributes to lots of other switches at 1GBs over fibre and some copper. There's a second in a simelar situation which has a 2GBs trunked link to the core switch and distributes to lots of other switches in the same cabinet and one on the floor underneath via copper Gigabit (all on cat5e, and all works well)

 

A few areas of our network are linked at 1GBs to desktop but we've found it makes little difference to be honest. One machine on its own logs on quicker, but a class of 30 still takes the same sort of time, as the uplink is the limiting factor.

 

All our servers are connected at Duel Gigabit to the core switch using teamed HP network cards, although our existing 4108gl which acts as our core switch can't cope with more than 8 trunks, so some of them don't work at their optimum. New core switch going in next week thou, it all arrived on Friday

 

We do have some segments of our network with old unmanaged netgear switches on which are all 100MBs uplinked, but we are slowly phasing these out.

 

Mike.

[Face-Man]

I was a little cynical about upgrading to gigabit but having done it and used port trunking between switches the network is now does ghost images far quicker.

 

However I would go for managed switches as when you get a problem it is far easier to see where it is.

[ScottStevinson]

We're only a medium sized junior school ~ 270 pupils in 8 classes.

 

Using HP Procurve 1800 switches site wide. We've found them to be excellent as although they are not truly layer 2 managed as they have no serial port on the front, you get all the layer 2 functionality provided through a web interface.

 

Therefore you can get a switch with 24x Gigabit Ports plus 2x Mini GBIC slots for ~£200.

 

Our configuration is as follows:

 

Core Switch with 2gb trunks to 2x new main servers (HP ProLiant ML350 G5) and 1gb single copper to 3x older servers (Dell PowerEdges)

 

2gb Cat5e Copper Trunk from core switch to each of the 6 remote switches (All ProCurve 1800s)

 

Gigabit to all desktops.

 

Works a treat for us. Supports VLAN etc not that we have a need for it on a site our size. The main advantages for us are trunking and gigabit to the desktop.

 

Scott