Switching Design

[ElijahBaley]

Hello

This is a little of topic, but as I am trying to learn about switching for the CCNA, I was curious about the following network:

Two small companies are located within a single office and share the network infrastructure including 2 NT servers and 2 Novell servers, printers and a leased line to the internet, as far as I can tell they pretty much operate as one company.

Why do they then have one 24 port 3com entry hub and two 24 port 3com superstack II switches racked in the server room.
(there are only abpout 30 nodes on this network)


Thanks


EB

 

[wybnormal]

Too vague.. can you diagram how the switches are laid out relative to the lease line and servers/workstations?

What do you mean by *entry hub* ?

MikeS
Find me at

http://www.packetattack.com

"Take advantage of the enemy's unreadiness, make your way by unexpected routes, and attack unguarded spots."
Sun Tzu

 

[ecafracs]

hey MIkeS, just curious. Why is it that I can't retreive e-mails from my packetattack.net account. It's been over 2 weeks now. I dunno, wAs it just my account?
anyways, good day and keep up the good work bro!

 

[ElijahBaley]

Thanks Mike

Sorry for being vague, this is the situation:

The 2 switches are uplinked and racked one on top of the other, the hub is situated just below and is connected to switch number 2 via CAT5 patch cable ('entry' is just part of the name of this 3com hub)

1 = switch no1
2 = switch no2
3 = hub (connected to switch no 2)

I am not sure if the switches and hub are still patched in there original configuration (looks a bit messy)

The user ports from either company are randomly distributed between both switches and the hub and I list below the ports of significance on each device, I did not mention before that there are two Apple Macs on the network:

1 = switch no1
Firewall
Novell server 1
Novell Server 2
NT Server 3

2 = switch no2
hub (connected to switch no 2)
NT Server 1
NT Server 2

3 = hub
switch no2
Apple Mac1
Aplle Mac2


Can you see any 'plan' to this or do you think this has evolved this way with equipment cobbled together?

Thanks for your help,

EB

 

[wybnormal]

ECA-

I dont know why not.. I just checked my own account there and it worked fine. Send me a private mail with the user ID and I can check further. Or I can just blow it away and you can recreate it. The email is handled by everyone.net and I have very limited tools to what I can do with it.

MikeS
Find me at

http://www.packetattack.com

"Take advantage of the enemy's unreadiness, make your way by unexpected routes, and attack unguarded spots."
Sun Tzu

 

[wybnormal]

It looks like it just *evolved* that way. What I would do is audit the switches and group the servers together since I bet they talk among themselves for various applications and then on that same switch, add the powerusers.. DBAs, heavy users of applications etc. The rest of the users would go on the 2nd switch. The hub sounds odd.. perhaps a problem with the Macs on the switches?

All servers
|
|
switch 1----------power users
|
|
switch 2 --------- everyday users
|
|
Hub----- macs?

Make sure to check the bandwidth requirements when interconnecting the switches. At the least 100 full duplex. Best would be an etherchannel if it's cisco equipment and has the option.

MikeS Find me at

http://www.packetattack.com

"Take advantage of the enemy's unreadiness, make your way by unexpected routes, and attack unguarded spots."
Sun Tzu

 

[wybnormal]

ECA- update.. the hosting service that provides the DNS (Bluedomino) for the email screwed up and removed the MX record. We are trying to get that small *oversight* corrected.

MikeS
Find me at

http://www.packetattack.com

"Take advantage of the enemy's unreadiness, make your way by unexpected routes, and attack unguarded spots."
Sun Tzu

 

[ElijahBaley]

Thanks for the advice Mike,

The switches are linked via a proper 3com uplink port at the back,so it seems to me that they act as one 48 port switch.

EB

 

[ecafracs]

it's working now. Thank you very much MikeS!