Need some insight

[Crusty]

Here's the deal, our office is expanding from 5 people to 20-30 people in the next month or two. We currently use consumer grade networking gear for our needs including a business class cable connection.

We are a small trading firm so having a working network connection that works 100% of the time during the day is a MUST. There can not be latency spikes, dropped connections, or saturated lines.

We only need data service, voice/media service will not be needed.

For our internet connections, we are definitely looking for a redundant setup. For bandwidth we would need no more then 10mbps up and down, but require low latency. Our clearing house will support either a VPN tunnel into their servers or a leased line connection. I was thinking of getting a direct high speed fiber line(and use the VPN tunnel) as well as a leased line in order to provide the redundancy.

We have no remote sites, or branch offices and there are no plans for any in the future.

Here are my thoughts.

Cisco Catalyst 2960 for the switches, 2960-48TT-L to be more specific.
A Cisco 2800 series router to handle the internet connections.

Here is where I get confused though, if I go the route of getting a router do I need to get a firewall appliance, or am I better off using an ISP supplied router and then using a firewall appliance to handle the VPN and failover switching to the leased line? I guess that really depends on the ISP too.

The important thing to remember is that it always needs to be working, and always needs low latency. LAN traffic will not be much, mostly filesharing and NOT mission critical.

Any insights or ideas on where I can do more research on this? I am definitely well versed in technology and have been part of a team that managed a network far larger then what we will need, just have never done the setup and deployment part.

 

[spidey07]

I'd go with a security appliance because of greater features and VPN capabilities. Let the provider do the router, one less thing you need to worry about. The 2960 switch will do just about anything a small network needs.

 

[Czar]

if you want to save some money I would also suggest checking out dell switches, much much cheaper and for your setup you wont notice the difference between it and a cisco.

For the router I agree with spidey, let the provider handle it. But you might want a firewall in between. Could do something cheap like a small linux machine, or could get a Microsoft ISA server... or could get a Cisco ASA box for all your needs.