PCs in Backbone Switch - Bad Idea?

[enjay]

Due to the location of our IT Suites, the switches feeding them are in the main data cabinet. Now, we want some more PCs in there but these switches are full; there are, however, plenty of empty ports on the backbone switch - is there any reason I can't/shouldn't plug workstations directly into the backbone switch?

[nicholab]

There is no real reason not to but it breaks the core>distribution>access layer model or more common in schools Core>access layer.

[SYNACK]

Nope, no reason not too and the Core -> Distribution layer thing is usually a luxury in schools anyhow. The only real reason you would need to keep to the two or three layer model is if you are implementing heavy traffic managment/security and routing in the system and have an extremely large network say minimu 5k hosts for the three layer model.

[enjay]

There is no real reason not to but it breaks the core>distribution>access layer model or more common in schools Core>access layer.

 

I was obviously aware it broke that model, my question was does it actually matter, or rather is that model worth £400 for a new switch?

[ronnoco]

Our core switch is pretty much full. It makes sense to utilise the bandwidth from these free ports. If you buy another switch, you will have to uplink and even if you buy a 10/100/1000 switch, you are not going to be able to give the clients the full bandwidth as you are limited by how quick the connection is to the core switch.

 

Hope this helps.

[maniac]

I've got around 30 or so PCs plugged directly into our Core switch, as it's fully populated with modules so it seemed silly not to take advantage of that fact.