Basic Switch Query

[Diffy1]

Hi

Wondering if somebody can kindly answer the following:

Upstairs network segment comes to downstairs comms room via a patch panel (upstairs switch is Gigabit). From the Patch panel it plugs directly into a non Gigabit switch (chained). One Gb switch in the comms room is used for our 4 servers with as man free ports. Would I flood the servers unnecessarily with traffic if I placed the plugged from the Patch Panel to the Gb switch that the servers use?



Many Thanks in advance!

 

[IRudebwoy]

Need more detail.

Any VLANs?

Any routing?

Network topology?

Goal?

 

[Diffy1]

Hi Thanks for coming back to me.

No VLAN's. just a number of 3COM switches on 1 LAN. Rouing only to connect an external branch office via a VPN.

This is where it gets a bit confusing but here goes:

2 switches upstairs handle section of PC's from upstairs department and downstairs dept. All other switches (for other devices) are in downstairs comms room.

Upstairs S1 connects to upstairs S2 (gigabit) - S2 runs to downstairs patch panel and from Patch Panel into a non gigbit switch (S3). The non gigabit switch is also chained to a switch above (s4 - servers) and a switch below (so in effect is dealing with traffic from 3 switches).

A number of people on this switch (S3) are experiencing random freezes so I'm looking at possible solutions.

Either move patch panel connection (from S2) into server gigabit switch (S4 ) but not sure if this is a good idea. Or run another connection from upstairs switch to downstairs patch panel an into the existing switch (S3) creating two connections between upstairs and downstairs switches).

Is the kind of setup perfectly normal (i.e. switch link going into Patch Panel before connecting to another Switch).

Cheers

 

[IRudebwoy]

Sorry 'bout the delay. I've been in crisis mode since my last post.

The "switch links" that run through a patch panel are okay. I would venture to say this is the preferred method instead of using a long "patch" cable. All premise cabling should be terminated at a patch panel and labeled accordingly.

The role S3 plays in your layout is an aggregation point. All traffic from your clients pass through this switch. Try and remove the all client connections to this switch and relocate them toward the edge switches (S1 or S2). If you have the ability to use gigabit uplinks from the client edge to the server core, use them. And make sure there are no loops in the topology. Spanning Tree (STP) *may* be causing the freezes but you won't know for sure until you can put a packet analyzer on your net.

I'm still kinda fuzzy when trying to visualize your layout. You have 5 five switches right?

Ideally, you want to arrange your network to the core-edge model. All your servers should connect at the core. This is where you have the best switches (and redundancy for failover situations). Connected to the core, via aggregate and resilient links if possible, your distribution switches can have various media connectors ( Copper and/or Fibre) and a failover partner is preferred. These switches form your core and should be gigabit so there won't be any bottlenecks. Then all your client (edge) switches connect to the distribution switches. This doesn't work for all situations but in your case it wouldn't hurt.

Have fun!