On Wed, 1 Dec 2010, Atom Powers wrote:
On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 12:08 PM, Jonathan B Bayer
<[email protected]> wrote:
Current setup:
1 gigabit switch connecting WAN (Internet) with routers. This
switch is unmanaged. This switch has 4 cables connected.
1 gigabit switch for internal switching, with two VLANS. This
is a managed switch. VLAN 1 has about 6 cables, VLAN 2 has 3
cables
Both switches are 24 port, although neither is even close to full.
1. How would you go about setting up the network, given what I've
listed above?
Are you sure you need Gigabit? I'd be surprised if your Internet
uplink was that big and most clients won't use more than a few MB. You
might be able to save a bundle if you can survive with 10/100 ports.
2. Would it make sense to do my second idea of a single, powerful
switch with 3 VLANS?
Yes. The internal forwarding on most switches is much faster than
individual ports, so by putting as many connections as possible on a
single switch could improve performance.
unless you need to move packets via the switch between the external VLAN
and the internal VLANs (aka, using the switch as your firewall/router),
this doesn't matter.
the single switch gives you one place to go to administer all the
networks, but going with separate switches means that you don't need to
worry about VLAN configuration. This makes one less category of things
that can go wrong.
If you are doing layer 3 switching, frequently need to move systems from
one network to another, or are simulating a complex environment VLANs can
be a huge win.
but in this environment, things seem simple enough that you may be better
served by having three cheaper switches, you could probably leave them
with their default configuration and not have to think about them.
David Lang
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