Cisco Project...

[Tab]

1) Cisco Group Project - Network this buidling...

2)Supposedly we are only limited to Cisco products. I've been unable to see why this is so, but we can use Linksys products as well. The prices I've seen on CDW are outragous. We can I find a accurrate representation of prices for cisco and linksys products?

3)How much bandwidth does the average computer really need?

4)How much does bulk ethernet actually cost?

5) Look at rooms 111-116. I think it would be better to get a 24 Port Switch +2 Gb Uplinks. Dasiy chain the gigabit all together. Or would it be better to put a bunch of switches in one room and have a crapload of wires using raceway?

 

[Cscutch]

First what is this project for? Class (CCNA,CCNP).

If you want some suggestions a bit more info about the project would help.

Chris

 

[randal]

2. Those are the prices, unless you can find a gold/silver/whatever vendor who will sell for less. If you buy a lot of stuff, though, it's not tough to knock 25-30% off of Cisco list pricing.

3. Over the course of a standard month, I'd budget 64kbps of Internet bandwidth per desktop. Maybe less if I had a decent cache system setup. JoeUsers don't need much 'net, especially when you firewall the crap out of them. (muHAhaHAa)

4. Iunno, $40-45 for 1000'? I'm sure you could buy it cheaper, but I know you can get 1000' for $50 at any home depot.

5. I like putting everything in one room. Other people like to work on a ladder, above the ceiling in a rat's nest. It's personal preference.

 

[Tab]

It's for a CCNA...

Basically the project consists of making a network... very basic....

The teacher isn't the greatest or in-tune to the market...

Does cisco offer catalogs or something?

 

[DarkJuJu]

With the limited info provided;

1)Centralize all wiring and switching hardware into one room
2)Layer 3 edge switches for class rooms and offices daisy chained with 1000mb Mini Gbic and break each class room out in its own Vlan
3)Layer 3 core switch for backbone capable of wire speed 10/100/1000 on all ports

 

[ScottMac]

Originally posted by: Tabb
It's for a CCNA...

Basically the project consists of making a network... very basic....

The teacher isn't the greatest or in-tune to the market...

Does cisco offer catalogs or something?

Your INSTRUCTOR is "not in-tune" ?

Cisco?? Catalogs??

If you are buying a lot of equipment, you can get some discounts (from Cisco direct or any of the resellers). Real equipment costs real money.

You cannot (should not) build a commercial network with tinker-toy SOHO equipment. There's much more to it than price.

The cost of having your network go down is MUCH more than the difference in price between commercial-grade equipment and "home user" stuff.

So, IMHO, you should sit down, stay quiet, and listen. It's not (necessarily) your instructor that's "out of touch."

FWIW

Scott

 

[spidey07]

*snicker*

First question.
Can all UTP cable runs be kept under 100 meters?

 

[Tab]

Originally posted by: ScottMac

Originally posted by: Tabb
It's for a CCNA...

Basically the project consists of making a network... very basic....

The teacher isn't the greatest or in-tune to the market...

Does cisco offer catalogs or something?

Your INSTRUCTOR is "not in-tune" ?

Cisco?? Catalogs??

If you are buying a lot of equipment, you can get some discounts (from Cisco direct or any of the resellers). Real equipment costs real money.

You cannot (should not) build a commercial network with tinker-toy SOHO equipment. There's much more to it than price.

The cost of having your network go down is MUCH more than the difference in price between commercial-grade equipment and "home user" stuff.

So, IMHO, you should sit down, stay quiet, and listen. It's not (necessarily) your instructor that's "out of touch."

FWIW

Scott

I believe I do know what I am talking about. We shouldn't need to be forced to buy fscking $400 managed Cisco switches for each room, we don't need it. My original plan was having 24 Port 10/100 +2GbE PowerConnects in each room. That'd be GbE for the backbone and MbE to the computers. He also believes that a switch still somehow shares bandwidth. Example lets say we have 1 server connected to a switch and 3 computers on the same switch. Let's say the 3 computers ftp to the server and all want some files at 100mb/s. He believes that the bandwidth is shared, that they'll all get 100mb/s(which wouldn't make sense as the wire from the server to the switch wont handle that speed nor will its' nic), which isn't true. I could keep on going on about other things, but I think I can stop.

We aren't buying any equipment, it's just our plan to network the building we are in. There are several groups and we all have to make a group plan for a network. He'll choose the best one.

I am asking for advice. Would it be more or less effective to put everything in one closet and then wire everything out? Or to put switches around the building in the same room as the computer they are networked too.

I know for a fact that a lot of the online websites are overpriced and outragous. Should I ask a local company for Cisco Router prices? This is where I become confused...

 

[n0cmonkey]

Definitely shop around. CDW generally has higher than normal prices (in my experience, YMMV, yadda yadda).

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: Tabb

Originally posted by: ScottMac

Originally posted by: Tabb
It's for a CCNA...

Basically the project consists of making a network... very basic....

The teacher isn't the greatest or in-tune to the market...

Does cisco offer catalogs or something?

Your INSTRUCTOR is "not in-tune" ?

Cisco?? Catalogs??

If you are buying a lot of equipment, you can get some discounts (from Cisco direct or any of the resellers). Real equipment costs real money.

You cannot (should not) build a commercial network with tinker-toy SOHO equipment. There's much more to it than price.

The cost of having your network go down is MUCH more than the difference in price between commercial-grade equipment and "home user" stuff.

So, IMHO, you should sit down, stay quiet, and listen. It's not (necessarily) your instructor that's "out of touch."

FWIW

Scott

I believe I do know what I am talking about. We shouldn't need to be forced to buy fscking $400 managed Cisco switches for each room, we don't need it. My original plan was having 24 Port 10/100 +2GbE PowerConnects in each room. That'd be GbE for the backbone and MbE to the computers. He also believes that a switch still somehow shares bandwidth. Example lets say we have 1 server connected to a switch and 3 computers on the same switch. Let's say the 3 computers ftp to the server and all want some files at 100mb/s. He believes that the bandwidth is shared, that they'll all get 100mb/s(which wouldn't make sense as the wire from the server to the switch wont handle that speed nor will its' nic), which isn't true. I could keep on going on about other things, but I think I can stop.

We aren't buying any equipment, it's just our plan to network the building we are in. There are several groups and we all have to make a group plan for a network. He'll choose the best one.

I am asking for advice. Would it be more or less effective to put everything in one closet and then wire everything out? Or to put switches around the building in the same room as the computer they are networked too.

I know for a fact that a lot of the online websites are overpriced and outragous. Should I ask a local company for Cisco Router prices? This is where I become confused...

you see, its this kind of terrible design that the class is trying to teach you to avoid. You don NOT EVER WANT switches just spread around willy-nilly, especially the linksys kind where you have no visibility, no control, no management - just a bunch of LEDs.

If you can centralize everyting into one closet and one switch. Hence why I asked about lenght. Do the design first and then worry about price, not trying to force a design around a product.

Because that is the single most fatal flaw in network design.

You build from the physical layer on up. Map out the cable distances and place closets accordingly, the fewer the better. From there you can work out the physical and logical topology.

-ps- cisco switches go for 3K - 250K, not 400 bucks.

-pss- how many nodes per VLAN? Where's the routing? These are things you should be thinking about.

 

[ScottMac]

If you have two or more devices contending for the same egress bandwidth, the effect is the same as shared bandwidth(plus the downside of latency).

A many-to-one situation (with all ports being the same bandwidth) is the *worse case* scenario for a switch. The best / most acceptable solution in that situation is to have the "shared" port as a higher bandwidth pipe (i.e., 100M ingress X 3 going to a GIG port to the resource, per your example).

Using commercial equipment, it would be easy enough to create a "zero hop" solution for everyone on the network ... using cheap-a$$ SOHO equipment, all you have is an expanded version of a crappy home network (and poorly designed crappy home network at that).

Just because two devices have apparently the same basic functionality doesn't make them equal. You have much to learn.

Again, I'd suggest you shut up and listen ... you can learn some important things about real networking. Business networks are not a LAN party, there's real money to lose if you do a poor design with sub-commercial-standard equipment.

Pay attention to what Mr. Spidey tells you, he's running a friggin' huge network and has (I'm reasonably certain) had his share of bleeding due to poor decisions (not necesarily his own).

So, again .... lose the 'tude and pay attention in class. AT THE LEAST you'll get another perspective .... it always good to have more than one approach.

FWIW

Scott

 

[Tab]

I don't think Dell Powerconnects are cheap SOHO equipment. I don't really know that when it comes to hardware. I would think a 24 MbE +2 GbE Uplinks would be able to handle basic web traffic and updates to the computers.

Just because two devices have apparently the same basic functionality doesn't make them equal. You have much to learn.

That's why I am asking you for advice...

I am not trying to be cocky here.

 

[ScottMac]

Pardon MY attitude, it's been an ugly week.

My point was that the instructor is presenting valid information (given your examples). While you may have a firm grip on networking as you currently know it, there is much much more out there in "the real world." Learning only one basic approach severely limits how well you can adapt a network for maximum efficiency. Learning as many points - of - view on any given topic concerning design gives you more tools, greater flexabillity.

The favorite axiom here is "When the only tool you have is a hammer, all the solutions start to look like nails"

To your situation:

If you look at that Dell switch: it has 24 ports @ 100 meg each, right?

Most or all of those ports are "aimed" at a single resource ... connected to one of the gig ports .... if more than 10 (well ~11-12) of those ports are active at one time, there is contention....someone is going to have to wait (i.e., is buffered). The gig port to the resource is oversubscribed @ 2.4X.

Something you can do to relieve that would be to light up TWO gig NICs in the server, split the switch into (at least) two VLANs (each VLAN / trunk on it's own gig port of the switch). Now you have a situation where you are just barely oversubcribed to your resource.

If each of the gig ports is trunked, use 802.1q on the server NICs to create multiple (logical) instances ... each on it's own subnet. If you can come up with a logical grouping of the clients, you can now apply a more modular security and/or filtering (via access lists / firewall rules, etc), and you don't have to apply it to all clients, just that particular subnet / vlan.

Another possibility is "teaming" the NICs, if the switch supports it. The problem with teaming is that you don't end up with a two gig pipe ... you get two one gig pipes to the same place ... and no control on how traffic is passed through the bonded link. In the past, it was not unusual to have most of the traffic passing on one of the links, while the other was underutilized (session -based distribution).

At least using VLANs, trunks, 802.1q etc, you can design the VLANs such as to balance the traffic, possibly provide some redundancy, maybe even set up VRRP (I don't know the Dell switch, and I don't remember if / how many routers you're looking at)). It's a little more work on the design side, but like many other things, the effort up front will pay off later as the network grows.

Excellent planning will beat out killer equipment pretty much every time. Planning is what separates the hacks from the pros.

Give it some thought, keep it simple, document the bejeezus out of it.

Good Luck

Scott

 

[JW310]

So this project is for a CCNA class, and you're asking why the requirement is to use Cisco equipment? Last I checked, the first C in CCNA was for Cisco.


But as far as suggestions, I'd have to agree with the advice that spidey07 and ScottMac are offering. AFAIK, they work in the field, so they've had a bit of real-world experience.

JW

 

[err]

Well,

I am a guy who is used to not believe in high expenses network equipment. Hell, if I can get a $0 free after rebate "some chinese manufactured switch", why would I want to invest $800 for Cisco 2924?

However, zoom 5 years ahead and after managing over 500 hosts network at my workplace and managing over 400 Internet servers in a datacenter, I am now a believer of Cisco stuffs

Since you are studying for your CCNA, you should be proud to introduce Cisco Stuffs on your network.

My take for your campus map is this (assuming this is only a project with unlimitted budget):

Assuming everything is less than 100M and you can run CAT5 on your infrastructure, I would recommend getting
1. Catalyst 4006 switch as your backbone switch.
2. Populate the blades with 48 ports FE
3. Run the whole campus using fully populated 4006 switch.

This baby will run you $30K easy for a new cisco switch. Off ebay, you can probably do $10K.

If you have more than 100 hosts, I would imagine a cisco 6500 would be great for you

Btw, you can look at cisco switches catalogs at http://www.cisco.com

I would personally look at fully populated 5513 with 24 port blades, redundant sup engines and route module if you need it to act as a router. Its cheap, reliable and excellent switch. If money is no object, look at 6509.

Have fun with your CCNA. Never buy a dell switch, they are crap IMO

 

[Tab]

Originally posted by: ScottMac
Pardon MY attitude, it's been an ugly week.

My point was that the instructor is presenting valid information (given your examples). While you may have a firm grip on networking as you currently know it, there is much much more out there in "the real world." Learning only one basic approach severely limits how well you can adapt a network for maximum efficiency. Learning as many points - of - view on any given topic concerning design gives you more tools, greater flexabillity.

The favorite axiom here is "When the only tool you have is a hammer, all the solutions start to look like nails"

To your situation:

If you look at that Dell switch: it has 24 ports @ 100 meg each, right?

Most or all of those ports are "aimed" at a single resource ... connected to one of the gig ports .... if more than 10 (well ~11-12) of those ports are active at one time, there is contention....someone is going to have to wait (i.e., is buffered). The gig port to the resource is oversubscribed @ 2.4X.

Something you can do to relieve that would be to light up TWO gig NICs in the server, split the switch into (at least) two VLANs (each VLAN / trunk on it's own gig port of the switch). Now you have a situation where you are just barely oversubcribed to your resource.

If each of the gig ports is trunked, use 802.1q on the server NICs to create multiple (logical) instances ... each on it's own subnet. If you can come up with a logical grouping of the clients, you can now apply a more modular security and/or filtering (via access lists / firewall rules, etc), and you don't have to apply it to all clients, just that particular subnet / vlan.

Another possibility is "teaming" the NICs, if the switch supports it. The problem with teaming is that you don't end up with a two gig pipe ... you get two one gig pipes to the same place ... and no control on how traffic is passed through the bonded link. In the past, it was not unusual to have most of the traffic passing on one of the links, while the other was underutilized (session -based distribution).

At least using VLANs, trunks, 802.1q etc, you can design the VLANs such as to balance the traffic, possibly provide some redundancy, maybe even set up VRRP (I don't know the Dell switch, and I don't remember if / how many routers you're looking at)). It's a little more work on the design side, but like many other things, the effort up front will pay off later as the network grows.

Excellent planning will beat out killer equipment pretty much every time. Planning is what separates the hacks from the pros.

Give it some thought, keep it simple, document the bejeezus out of it.

Good Luck

Scott

Those where my examples, not my instructors. You may know Cisco now offers high school students a oppertunity to take this class while in High School. I do realize I don't know everything, but I do know my instructor wouldn't be talking about 1/4th of what you said. This would go along with why we know have 1 page questionaries after our test about why so many people are dropping the CCNA Program. The building I goto is about 15 mins out of the way which lowers class time. The adult program that was offered was much different. I'd be amazed if I even got a CCNA through this program I sure as hell would NOT be comfortable setting up a commerical network just with that class.

The hardware background really concerns me, I simply dont know what "xxxx" Cisco Switch/Router is capable off. One of my other group members is very into Macs' he working on his AppleCare cert, and 'tries' to be unbiased. What do you guys think of Apple's Servers and X-Raid?

 

[err]

In order to learn, you'd really have to get your hand on a real cisco switches, the 2900 families, the 3500 families, 4000, 5500, 6500. It would be extremely hard to get your hand on each of these switches since they are all pricey. I've been in your shoes before as a student

You will also have to learn about different type of interfaces and modules that cisco has for its 4000 series switches and up, what they can do and what each differences are.

CCNA will only give you introduction to all this.

Don't despair. CCNA is not that hard. I would suggest you to get a hand on a catalyst 2912 and cisco 2600 router in order to play around. There are also virtual router / switch software to let you play with IOS.

 

[Tab]

We've got 2600s and 2500s. We don't really get that much time to eh, experiment. It's pretty easier to configure them and get stuff going, at least I think so.

 

[Garion]

Time for me to throw my two cents in here..

Most mail-order houses provide reasonable prices for Cisco gear. For a project this size, you might be able to get them a BIT cheaper, but not much. Yes, it's expensive, but you get what you pay for.

There is no such thing as "Bulk Ethernet". Ethernet is a protocol, not a cable type. The cost of the cable is only part of the cost of cabling a building - You have to look at the labor (very expensive!), the termination (patch panels, keystone jacks, etc.) the certification, etc. We usually figure $150 - $200 per run to get them professionally done. Anotehr thing to keep in mind is that there are many different types of cable to run. Cat5, Cat5E, Cat6, etc. Then you have to deal with plenum vs. non-plenum, etc. Google is your friend.

On bandwidth - A very high estimate is that most computers will use less than 5 Mb/s of network bandwidth. It's more likely that it will be ~1Mb/s. Yes, it sounds low, but think about how often your average business computer is sending data across the network. Not very often.

No offense, but this is supposed to be an exercise where you prove what you've learned in the class. Not only that, it's supposed to be a CCNA prep class. where you use Cisco gear. What I would suggest is that you first come up with your first pass of a design then ask us for comments, not necessarily the other way around as it appears that you're doing.

Keep in mind that a CCNA is a very basic networking cert. It's not designed to teach you what you need to know to design a network. It's more about how to administer at a very basic level the gear and what the capabilities of the different components are.

That being said, unless you've been given a LOT more information you haven't shared with us, you don't haev anywhere near what you need to do this project. For example, how many computers are there per room? How big is the building, so you can ensure your cable runs are within spec length? What do people DO with their computers? What room can you take over for to use for your central switches and cabling termination? Do you need any kind of layer 3 or routing to anywhere else on a WAN? What kind of IP addressing do you need to use? What kind of PC's are out there and what are their capabilities (i.e., are they fast P4's with gig cards or P2's with 10BaseT)? What's the budget, so you can decide what kind of switches to use? Is their appropriate crawlspace and physical design to run cables in the ceiling or do you need to do something else? Are there any firewalls (walls to prevent the spread of fire, not network firewalls) to consider when looking at your cabling?

- G

 

[Goosemaster]

Scottmac and Spidey have a point. Don?t focus on model numbers and equipment types, as it is, for all practical purposes, irrelevant to you right now.

What you should do first is define where your IDF/MDF's will be. Basically, it looks like you will have two main MDFs (or one main one in one of the two buildings) and perhaps one IDF per floor for each building.

Then calculate what the maximum runs for your cables will be, adding repeaters/switches where necessary.

Then define what type of traffic you will require. For example, if you have two MDF's, one per building, server rooms might need nice and juicy GigE links. That said, Accounting, Executive, and other departments might get by with 10Mb/s or 100Mb/s links for slack. In addition, certain areas like the server room and accounting might require higher priority on the links. Using VoIP is a prime example of when bandwidth prioritization would be mandatory. In that case you would need to create Vlan's, and implement bandwidth limitations. Learn about ports and firewalling?.

Once you realize how much bandwidth and what features the IDF's need to provide each floor with, calculate the total bandwidth of your WAN link.

Finally, choose the routers that suite those needs.

As people wrote, planning is everything. Frankly, at your stage, finding the router should be the last step, after finding the switches that is?. .


Good luck


EDIT:

Notice how I didn;t mention a single model Number or band (as if )
People tend to underestimate the CCNA and assumign it is a brand and model-number race...it is not, lemme tell you.

As with most educated fields, it requires a deep understanding of the underlying principles. For example, I could tell yo uthat , assumign that you had a 1.5Mbps T-1 in between the buildings a 2600 series would do most everything you need, but that would be foolish of me, as you don;t even know what you need, and I might be missing something.


Once yo uare done setting up the schematics you should have a clear lsit of the features you require for routers and switches, such as:

VLAN -VLAN trunking
Port-based fowarding
Firewall - NAT - DHCP
Layer2, layer 3 capabilities on the switches
bandwidth...prioritization

 

[spidey07]

we also forgot to mention voice and video.

need power over those ethernet links?

 

[dphantom]

and wireless. Voice and video need special consideration as others have pointed out. Latency/jitter become significant problems with VoIP.

Needs analysis and design is everything. Then you can start plugging in equipment models.

CCNA is an entry-level admin. Almost sounds like this is turning into a CCDA class.

 

[Jumperus]

Well, I'm assuming he's far enough along in CCNA to have learned switching, trunking, VLANs. We did that in CCNA 4, and CCNA 3 was basically semi-advanced routing (EIGRP, OSPF, etc). Unfortunately for me, the most complicated thing we did in Cisco 4 was set up a few routers, few switches, and 9 clients using trunking, VLANs, etc. Nothing nice and 'real world' like this, which looks like an interesting project.

Perhaps you can tell us how far along you are? Did they teach you yet about layered switching, trunking, VLANs, etc? Like I said, I assume they did, and who the hell would issue this kind of project without it, but you never know. =D

 

[Cscutch]

For those who don't know this project is similar to the project you complete when you take the CCNA Cisco Acadamey.

At the end of CCNA 4 you will complete a Threaded Case Study where you have to desgin a network for a School board. This consits of like 20 Schools and a head office, you have to desgin the WAN for the board as well as a LAN for one school.

If you would like some more info on that project here read this: Project Details.

I think it is a good learning tool. I also think it would of been cool to redo the project after CCNP classes. And then look at the difference between them.

Chris