When should we implement VLANs?

[keno44]

two of my co-workers insisted we implement vlans in our office. i say, no way! i argued this suggestion stating there would be no return on investment with the way this implementation has been planned, especially seeing what it cost, approx 45-50K, includes consulting and equipment. in addition, this complicates things and we have no solid CCNA skills here in house.

the reasons i was given as to why we should implement vlans are the following.
1. increased security
2. reduced broadcasts
3. more avaiable IP addresses, allowing for expansion

our environment before vlan
private class c network
75 PCs, DHCP clients
65 users, company probably not going to expand beyond 100 employees for years to come.
30 printers, static IP
15 servers, static IP
2 WINS servers
1 DNS internal server
1 server for all users data and printer server
1 mail server
basically, all users need to access most servers.
DHCP pool is all messed up, we have 180 reservations and only about 75 for DHCP clients.

here is how they want to segment the network.
vlan1 for servers and printers
vlan2 for PCs
vlan3 between FW and local segments

i dont see the added value here. am i crazy or is there a good reason for segmenting our network this way?

if you believe VLANs would provide value to us, could you please state as to why...?
or could someone state as to how we should segment the class c, that would provide added value given the info above?
if you feel there is no reason to segment at all, please state why.

thanks all,

 

[ssphoenix]

This depends what hardware you have. On a cisco you can do vlans in about 10 minutes. Take this time and the amount of network equipment you have, might give you better performance. This obviously depends on what type of software are you running, thin clients, fat cliens, database, Unix... etc.

If you do decided on vlan, I wound't put all servers in on vlan. It would be poinless. I would devided by departmens as well as which users is going to which server.

Now the last question. Do you have a speed problem?
Have you looked at your hardware? There are tons software, most free to test your network speed.