suggested setup for new office

[ITtech101]

Hi,

I'm relatively new to the Cisco world and have been asked by my boss to design a network for our new offices. We will be spread over four floors with about 40 users on two floors and 15 on the other two I was thinking along the lines of a 2950 for three floors and a cat4503 with a SupII-Plus-TS and 1xWS-X4248-RJ45V (so we can experiment with voice) for the floor where the servers are located.
The Sup module has 8 SFP ports, can these be connected to the GBICS on the cat 2950s. Is this whole thing a realistic infrastructure? thanks in advanced

 

[skialta]

Since you mentioned voice, you may want to go ahead and skip the 2950s and go strait to the 3550 or the 3750 series switches. This will give you the Layer 3 you need plus QoS. When I had to buy a "core" switch, there was not much difference, relativly speaking between the 3550 and the 3750. Now I have 10/100/1000 for the servers...I would suggest that you run fiber between floors and consider 3 VLANs. 2 VLANs for the users and 1 VLAN for your servers. Just my 2 cents...

 

[dogsbod]

thanks for the reply. will the services you described be available with the SMI version (considerably cheaper than the EMI version)

 

[skialta]

Hmmm...good question. I don't know for sure but I don't beleive so. I believe you need the enhanced image to take advantage of VLAN's..but not 100%.

 

[jpm121]

No, you don't need EI to do VLANs. We're running 3550-SI 24-PWRs and they handle VLANs just fine.

 

[Jsteve]

The SMI will support what you need, but I believe it may not support some of the advance QOS features. It will support some basic L3 protocols, but you will not be able to do any BGP or EIGRP (?). Also if you go with this model, look for the inline power to support you VOIP phones.