Merging two physical networks

[digityzed]

There was two separate networks (two separate businesses) with separate wiring and infrastructure (ISP modem, router, switch, patch panel and networking closet) on the same floor. One business moved out and the other is now expanding and moving in to occupy the newly available office space. The outgoing business left the Cat 6 wiring throughout their half of the floor and the patch panel in their networking closet.

How do I merge these physical networks together the right way?

How do I merge these physical networks together the "good enough" way?

How do I merge these physical networks together the quick & dirty way?


Thanks in advance

 

[john-b691]

Put a switch in the closet with the new patch panel and cable it back to the switch that supports the current company. If you need upgrade the bandwidth on the isp.

Unless you are talking a huge number of people your current router and network masks should support them.

 

[digityzed]

See, I thought it was that simple (running a cable switch to switch), but have a strong feeling it isn't. I don't have to worry about bandwidth issues (LAN & WAN) with half the floor depending on that one Ethernet cable?

 

[choucove]

The short answer is going to be simply install a new switch into the wiring closet where your new patch panel is located, and run a connection from your primary switch/router device to the new switch to integrate it with your network. However, this really isn't going to be the "right" solution.

There's a lot of factors that determine what you might need to do in this situation. For instance, the number of devices that you have on your network, the number you are planning to expand to and support on the other half of the building, the distance from one wiring closet to the other, and the intended usage of your network. A single gigabit connection from your new switch back to your primary router/switch should be enough, but it may not be if you've got quite a few new connections to handle on that side. Additionally, do your switches all connect together using Spanning Tree, or connect back to a central router? Do you have VLANs to migrate to the new switch that you have to consider?

 

[john-b691]

See, I thought it was that simple (running a cable switch to switch), but have a strong feeling it isn't. I don't have to worry about bandwidth issues (LAN & WAN) with half the floor depending on that one Ethernet cable?

I seriously doubt you will exceed a gig on the uplink between the office areas. They make switches with 10g ports if you have issues or you can just bond a few ports together to get 2g or 4g or whatever.

To be blunt if you are talking about a company that you would really exceed bandwidth of 1g you would not be asking simple questions like this on a forum. If you really suspect your traffic will exceed that you need to go out and hire someone. With that much traffic you are going to have design server farms and firewall policies that take specialized skills.

I work for a large company with many 100s of offices. We run with no local server and no local internet. This means that they are 100% dependent on one of the centralized data centers around the world. The number we use for bandwidth required is 100k/user so 1000 users would only need 100m. It in general works out very well. The main data centers that support around 10000 users each seldom even exceeds 800m. Of course if we allowed porn surfing or bit torrent then we would need 10 times that bandwidth.

 

[digityzed]

Nope, nothing fancy, very basic. Maybe 8 - 12 additional network devices will be running from the new networking closet and half of that will probably be devices migrating from the old networking closet.

 

[DW_Kominsky]

I have a similar problem and am trying to figure out what I should do. We currently occupy one floor of a building and are going to be expanding into the next floor up. Our current setup consists entirely of unmanaged switches (mostly GigE, but one 100Mbps) daisy chained together for a total of about 60 ports. From these switches, we have:
the company's servers
A NAS used for backups
our WAN connection
about 25 workstations (with all datafiles redirected to shares on the servers).



The servers and NAS are staying put, but about 75% of the workstations will be moving to the new floor. In addition, management is contemplating switching to VOIP. I'm concerned about bandwidth limit imposed by running over a single GigE link between the two floors. We're an engineering firm, and end up moving a fair amount of data across the network. For example, there are instances where I'll have to move 100GB files between the two floors. Can I somehow "gang" multiple cables between the two switching nodes? I'm thinking some sort of smart switch on each end of the floor-to-floor link that can act to create a fast bus between the two distribution nodes.

The final considerations are that I would like this to be transparent to the end users (you'd be amazed how many engineers are not tech savvy), and of course cost is always a factor.

Many thanks,
Dan

 

[digityzed]

Don't quote me on this, but I think you'll want to go with managed switches (instead of smart switches) that has a 10 gigabit port on it, maybe two, and use that to connect the two switches. That should be more than enough to handle huge file transfers.

Also the managed switch should give you better VLAN management for the VOIP phones.

 

[choucove]

I'm gonna agree with Digityzed on the recommendations for replacing out your switching infrastructure. Not only are you going to be possibly utilizing VOIP and will need some QoS (Quality of Service) but you also are transferring very large capacities of data regularly. For this kind of thing, I'd recommend investing in some switches that have 10GbE capable uplinks. For example, the Cisco SG500X-24-K9-NA which is a 24-port gigabit switch with 4 SFP+ 10GbE uplink ports. They also make these switches in 48-port and PoE configurations which are ideal if you're also going to be running VOIP off of your network switches.

 

[digityzed]

Best answer selected by digityzed.

 

[DW_Kominsky]

Thank you both for your responses... I'm afraid that the prices on the suggested hardware a bit rich for what the company is willing to spring for, so I'm planning on trying to use a pair of TP-Link managed switches which support 802.3ad, and try to set up a quad link between the two of them.

 

[digityzed]

Thank you both for your responses... I'm afraid that the prices on the suggested hardware a bit rich for what the company is willing to spring for, so I'm planning on trying to use a pair of TP-Link managed switches which support 802.3ad, and try to set up a quad link between the two of them.

I feel ya. My clients sometimes can't afford $3000 switches either. Despite that I still present them with the best option no matter what, so that they're well informed. If they haggle long enough then I might present them with the TP-Link level of solutions. Getting folks to budget for IT properly sure is a biatch!