massy

Has anyone found a solution to this?

2 half time teachers / technicians (me and colleague) supporting +- 280 pcs 10 servers 15 printers 20 projectors 110 teachers and staff 710 pupils

At the moment, there is no fiber in the old buildings and therefore no switches that are capable of connecting fiber. We will need at least 2 of these switches, one in the serverroom in the old building and one in the serverroom in the new building. We have 3 buildings connected with copper (cat5e). Our plan is to change this to fiber when we have the fiber going to the new building. In the buildings (both existing and new) the internal cabling is copper, in the new building this will be 1Gbit to the client. Current backbone is 1Gbit, 100Mbit to the clients. I don't know if a 10Gbit backbone is necessary?

In the current buildings we have a range of brands and types, backbone is mostly managed Linksys, in the classrooms we use cheap (£20, secondhand) 10/100 switches by netgear. The network is getting quite old and we're planning updates over the next few years. We'll recable the backbone and probably buy new switches then, possibly the same as in the newbuild.

The cabling plans for the building date from before my time here and couldn't be changed. I would have preferred centralised switches. We install the switches in small locked cabinets in the classrooms, no fiddling can be done.

I don't know the amount of computers yet (+100). Too much, if you ask me.

My school is expanding and currently constructing a big new building. The contractor asked us to specify which switches we want in the building. I don't know since I've never installed a big network from scratch. The incoming signal from the existing building will come over glassfibre. The internal cabling in the building will be cat6a. We have a central connecting point where the fibre comes in and about 100 cat6a cables leave. Some classrooms will have their own switch as well. Which switches should I ask for? Specific models please. Cisco will be too expensive, I'll probably be looking into enterasys or HP. If you have had good experiences with other brands, please do share.

We tend to classify that as 'unplanned repairs' - the same pot as the money fot broken LCD's, dropped hard drives ...