New office building being built, which cable infrastructure should we use?

[Maverick2002]

Next year we're building a new office for our company and wiring the place for serious network speed. We are entertaining the idea of fiber optics and other methods, but I'm particularly interested in 10GBE, 40GBE, and 100GBE.

After reading through these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_6_cable
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_7_cable

It looks like we'll want to get Cat7 cables if possible, Cat6e otherwise. Currently our network is partially Gigabit, rest is 100mbps. At our new building we'll start everyone out at Gigabit with the prospect of easily expanding to 10GBE and above without having to rewire the whole place internally.

Anyone have experience with 10GBE or at least some good guesses/relevant information?

TIA!

 

[spidey07]

Cat6a from Belkin with matching jacks and patch cables. I'd avoid cat7, it's not going to have much traction in use.

 

[tonyyy]

Cat6 all the way!

 

[Bashbelly]

by far the cheapest way to get 10Gbe + is to use fiber. the optics have come down a ton. don't forget to run at least 2x much fiber pairs as you need. paying for fiber runs down the road sucks.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Cat6 is probably your best bet, maybe fiber for the "backbone" and while you probably don't have much say in this, but in case you do, make sure it's all setup in a way that makes it easy to add/modify cabling in the future. Ex: all drop ceiling, conduit etc.

Also run more jacks then you need, consider that a certain room may potentially be used as an office later. Even put jacks in closets, storage rooms etc... much easier to do before the drywall is up. Where I work they work upsidedown so much. They're constantly adding new jacks all over, when they should of been some in first place when the place was built.

 

[spidey07]

I'm sorry. But I'm seeing very bad advice in this thread. Very bad. Do it right the first time and hire a professional to do it.

 

[JackMDS]

LOL, New Office building is build and you design its Network Inrafstrucure over an Internet Forum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technology_consulting
.

 

[Zargon]

I'm sorry. But I'm seeing very bad advice in this thread. Very bad. Do it right the first time and hire a professional to do it.

some of us ARE professionals

scary isnt it?

maverick you souind pretty overwhelmed

are they going to have an architext do an update?

most of them dont know jack shit about netowrking, and wont run big conduit beetween floors etc.

please make sure you get some of that

and make sure they add auxilary ac for the network closest and server room

 

[Maverick2002]

I have no idea how you came up with the assumption that I'm designing this, I'm not. I'm doing research to figure out what the best cable type will be for us. Can we stay on topic? Thanks.

The real question is for future proofing purposes, what is the best cable type. At the very least we're getting Cat6, but I'm wondering if Cat6e (or Cat7 or even fiber) is a better solution and more future-proof.

 

[yinan]

Id suggest a mixture. You will want fibre inside your datacenter. Fiber runs to your access layer switches is also a good idea. From there though, you can use CAT5/6 for runs to desktops.

 

[Maverick2002]

Well, we have about 60 computers total, about 20 of those being servers so we're not a huge company, but we do need high speed. I heard 10gbe also has lower latencies than regular gigabit, is that so? That's one of our main concerns right now, especially running MPP engineering simulations (we currently fork over serious $$ for infiniband interconnects).

 

[spidey07]

Well, we have about 60 computers total, about 20 of those being servers so we're not a huge company, but we do need high speed. I heard 10gbe also has lower latencies than regular gigabit, is that so? That's one of our main concerns right now, especially running MPP engineering simulations (we currently fork over serious $$ for infiniband interconnects).

Well you're confusing the issue. If you want a decision between cat6a and cat 7 then cat6a is the obvious choice. If you're asking what's best for a high performance network then copper cable doesn't enter the equation. What you need is a solid network design and then choose the cabling, not choose a cable and design around it.

As mentioned optics for 10 gig ethernet have dropped significantly in the last two years, so if you need high performance then look to high bandwidth 50 micron multimode fiber for short distances and stations that need it or single mode for interconnecting closets. I really think you need a professional here.

Latency is a non issue on a lan, but yes 10 gig has exaclty 1/10th the serialization delay of gig ethernet.

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Well you're confusing the issue. If you want a decision between cat6a and cat 7 then cat6a is the obvious choice. If you're asking what's best for a high performance network then copper cable doesn't enter the equation. What you need is a solid network design and then choose the cabling, not choose a cable and design around it.

As mentioned optics for 10 gig ethernet have dropped significantly in the last two years, so if you need high performance then look to high bandwidth 50 micron multimode fiber for short distances and stations that need it or single mode for interconnecting closets. I really think you need a professional here.

Latency is a non issue on a lan, but yes 10 gig has exaclty 1/10th the serialization delay of gig ethernet.

This.

Determine the protocols and topology to be used, then determine the equipment needed, then based off that your cable choice should be made for you.

 

[xSauronx]

LOL, New Office building is build and you design its Network Inrafstrucure over an Internet Forum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technology_consulting
.

really. network design for an entire new office really requires more details than are in the OP and a consultant experienced in network design.

you only get one chance to do it, so do it right so that it will last and be sufficient for future needs. you dont need to be researching cabling, OP, but rather companies in your part of the state that do this kind of work on a regular basis.

 

[Shakeout]

A consultant will help a lot in this scenario.

I would have to say you would need to sit down and look at your current needs and find your constraints. If the cabeling is the constraint in your current building than put the money into better cable for the new building.

From my own opinion Cat 6a would be perfectly fine, Fiber would be the most future proof.

 

[Shakeout]

Double post Sorry

 

[spidey07]

A consultant will help a lot in this scenario.

I would have to say you would need to sit down and look at your current needs and find your constraints. If the cabeling is the constraint in your current building than put the money into better cable for the new building.

From my own opinion Cat 6a would be perfectly fine, Fiber would be the most future proof.

MM fiber is reaching the end of it's life IMHO. It just can't keep up with the speeds. 62.5 micron is essentially dead.

 

[yuppiejr]

Next year we're building a new office for our company and wiring the place for serious network speed. We are entertaining the idea of fiber optics and other methods, but I'm particularly interested in 10GBE, 40GBE, and 100GBE.

After reading through these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_6_cable
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_7_cable

It looks like we'll want to get Cat7 cables if possible, Cat6e otherwise. Currently our network is partially Gigabit, rest is 100mbps. At our new building we'll start everyone out at Gigabit with the prospect of easily expanding to 10GBE and above without having to rewire the whole place internally.

Anyone have experience with 10GBE or at least some good guesses/relevant information?

TIA!

As someone who has managed the IT + AV disciplines of 6 office facility retrofits this year alone I feel like a lot of information is missing to make a good recommendation regarding the cabling infrastructure in this building. It's not going to do you any good to throw in CAT7 or even 6e if all of your clients are bottle-necking at the WAN to a central data center.. or if you are attempting to copy data from a local storage resource that is significantly slower than your workstation's network connection.... etc.. engineering decisions made in a vacuum suck...

You simply cannot properly design any one component in a network infrastructure without considering the big picture... and over-buying "just in case" is bad business. Unless you are in an environment where your IT budget is limitless, overspending in one area means you are having to cut performance/features/reliability elsewhere that may have greater business value. Also consider that server/workstation/application virtualization and products like the new Cisco/VMware Nexus virtual switches may completely obsolete the importance of office level cabling infrastructure before your CAT7 investment would ever pay off. Lets not forget the costs you will end up incurring on everything from your data fabric switches to SAN heads, server network adapters/HBA's to make effective use of all that speed.

You should first understanding and define the business needs along with the traits of your current environment before you decide what cabling to throw in the walls. It won't do you any good to buy a dragracer if you end up needing to drive windy mountain roads with 2 tons of cargo in the back...

 

[yinan]

Thin clients and a virtualized desktop environment may also help in this case. Would reduce the requirement for actual fast links to users desktops.

 

[Emulex]

just run two segments of fiber man; less latency

 

[Maverick2002]

Alright so here's an update - apparently we don't have a consultant or any professional to do this. It looks like I'm the professional who will be making recommendations regarding network infrastructure. It is what it is and I would appreciate help instead of criticism.

Here's the big picture: we will have 50-60 computers all on the same network, 2 servers, and 1 NAS (possibly 2, but unlikely), some printers, and some shared drives. Everything is in one building. Building is probably 150-200ft long, maybe 100ft wide.

We have 15 servers (10 Xeons, 5 Quad Cores) which are used primarily for 3ds max rendering and engineering simulations (mostly LS Dyna). We just started integrating Infiniband into a few of our racks for MPP for Dyna, but the rest of our network is about 15% gigabit, 85% megabit. From a practical standpoint I think most of our bottlenecking related to the network has to do with everyone copying to the same NAS.

In general I think a company-wide move to gigabit will be sufficient, though I would like to explore faster options, particularly support for 10gb down the road. TIA

 

[Shakeout]

I would go with cat 6a.

Something you will need to start thinking about also is.

Locations of Punchdowns, Number of Drops per office, Cable Management, i'm sure others will add more you need to think of.

 

[Maverick2002]

I read over this again and there are some good points. I will bring up getting together with a consultant (or someone who really knows what they're doing) at our next meeting. I realize the situation isn't ideal, but there are a lot of things done here from an IT perspective that are bandaid fixes; it's just the way the company operates. We don't have any dedicated IT people - it's mostly myself and a couple other people who help out on the side, but we all do production work. We're growing as a company and this is uncharted territory. While we may not get the optimal setup, we just want something better/faster than what we have now. For all intents and purposes we're doing ok even with a Buffalo NAS for all of our storage and a Win2k box as our main server, though things do slow down at times.

So all of these things I need to think about ... is there some sort of network-infrastructure-for-dummies type thing or? While I won't be physically running cables through walls, we may or may not end up getting a professional consultant to recommend things - that decision is not up to me. If I have to do it myself, I want to be as prepared as possible, and that's the help I'm asking from rather than "LOL OP is trying to put together a company network".

 

[imagoon]

It is difficult to give you a "guide for dummies" mostly because the infrastructure covers a lot of areas.

At the physical:

If you are looking at gigabit to the desktops, then Cat6a + cat6a keystones / patch panels. You put the 19" patch panel in the server room / data closet and run cable from there. Make sure to have this done by a company that tests their work. Physical cable is a building investment and should not be done "by the cheapest bidder" but by the cheapest "integrator" that is willing to warranty their work.

Network switches: Do yourself a favor and push for good network switches. If money is really tight use something like Dell Powerconnect, otherwise Cisco or HP Procurves generally run better. Much of this will be based on your needs. This step should be like 5% of your work while analyzing business need is the other 95%. Not doing this analysis is what makes IT get in to the poor shape it sounds like your office is heading. Execs see IT as cost center, your job is to convince them that you are saving money and there is a business need for this gear. If you can't convince yourself you need it then take a good hard look at the "Do I need it?" question.

Desktops:

If you can replace 2k machines. All security support ends in March 2010. Also try to reduce the average age of the office machines if there is an issue. An office full of 8 year old PCs with 2k and office 2000 on it is a glaring sign to me that the company does not know how to manage those assets.

Support side / servers:
You need to replace win2k. Support is gone March 2010. Pick up a small server with Small Business Server from Microsoft or if your a Linux shop your favorite flavor of Linux. A NAS is nothing more than a server so if you build it correctly you can easily store your data on the Windows server.

For a Windows based network I would have more than one server, each with AD installed on it. You can also using something like Windows Storage Server for a more "NAS like" interface.

There is also VMware, do you need it? Do you have lots of servers sitting mostly idle or 1-2 over worked machines? Idle servers can be stacked on to one machine to save a bit of cash in power and support. The essentials package is about $1k and can really help small to mid companies get started.

I know this little guide has holes, I am trying to fill them in as I see them. Thing is a dummies guide could easily be a 2000 page book with 8 point font and we would still have space issues because there is so much to cover.

 

[Maverick2002]

Thanks for the heads up! We had a meeting and here's a slight update:

1) We will have several consultants advising us on the physical layout of cables, closets, any cables, etc, so I'm not responsible for that. Really I just need to make some recommendations if I think what we're doing is out of scope at all.

2) I think cat6a will be sufficient for everything we need. We'll be switching to 1Gb off the bat and eventually moving to 10Gb.

3) We have Server 2008 R2 for our main server, we just haven't rebuilt it yet.

4) We're slowly switching over to Office 2007/Win 7 for all desktops.

5) All of our production machines are engineering/visualization boxes with a few lower end programming pcs. The former are all beefy machines and need to stay that way. We've tried VMWare for several things but as a company virtualization doesn't make any sense for us at this point.

6) I think we are getting Dell switches, I'm working with another coworker on the details.

This is all very helpful, thanks!