Question New Hotel Infrustructure

[Reda_ELF]

Hello everyone,

We’re in the planning phase of building a new hotel, and I’m seeking advice on the most efficient and scalable way to design the network infrastructure.

We have two options in mind and would appreciate your professional input:

Traditional setup: Running dedicated Ethernet cabling for each service (e.g., separate lines for PBX phones, Internet/data, IPTV, surveillance cameras, etc.), with distribution points/floor racks for each.

Converged network setup: Using a central switch or aggregation system where all services (PBX, TV, Internet, etc.) are connected at the input, and a single fiber optic uplink is used to carry all traffic to distribution switches on each floor or per room, which then break it out to the relevant devices.

One of our key concerns with the converged approach is:
If the main fiber optic cable gets damaged, could that potentially bring down the entire network?
Are there best practices or redundancy measures that can prevent this risk?
If anyone has experience with similar hotel projects or has strong recommendations for one topology over the other (including pros/cons), I’d be grateful to hear your insights.

Thank you in advance!

 

[Zerk2012]

Hire a professional. They will be a lot of variables.

 

[kanewolf]

Hire a professional. They will be a lot of variables.

Hire a professional as a consultant, at a MINIMUM.

 

[kanewolf]

Hello everyone,

We’re in the planning phase of building a new hotel, and I’m seeking advice on the most efficient and scalable way to design the network infrastructure.

We have two options in mind and would appreciate your professional input:

Traditional setup: Running dedicated Ethernet cabling for each service (e.g., separate lines for PBX phones, Internet/data, IPTV, surveillance cameras, etc.), with distribution points/floor racks for each.

Converged network setup: Using a central switch or aggregation system where all services (PBX, TV, Internet, etc.) are connected at the input, and a single fiber optic uplink is used to carry all traffic to distribution switches on each floor or per room, which then break it out to the relevant devices.

One of our key concerns with the converged approach is:
If the main fiber optic cable gets damaged, could that potentially bring down the entire network?
Are there best practices or redundancy measures that can prevent this risk?
If anyone has experience with similar hotel projects or has strong recommendations for one topology over the other (including pros/cons), I’d be grateful to hear your insights.

Thank you in advance!

First you NEVER pull a single pair of fiber between distribution closets. You pull a 4 pair or 6 pair trunk. If you are really worried about damage, then you put it in conduit. Conduit protects against physical damage and having multiple fibers in the trunk allows a quick swap to an alternate pair if one single fiber (or termination) is suspect.

 

[bill001g]

As suggested above you get a real network consultant...rather than people like me on a forum. My retirement from network is answering only the questions I feel like.

Even if you were to run copper you want it redundant.

You would want to run a secondary fiber/copper connection. You would optimally run the second fiber in a different path or at least a different conduit. The multi-pair trunk cables kanewolf talks about many times come in a armored version. These have a steel outer shell that is not trivial to cut.

In the simplest design you would just plug the 2 fibers into the same switches. On a cheap consumer switch you get a loop but on business grade stuff it uses spanning tree to only use a single connection and if a path would fail it will switch over. The switch over time is generally 15 seconds but it can be reduced to I think 4 seconds.

So this protects against a single fiber issue and a failed fiber port in the switch. It is possible to design so you can fail the switch itself but I will leave that discussion for you to have with your hired consultant if you are thinking about it.

 

[USAFRet]

This is a long solved thing.

Likely your ISP already has consultants onboard, who have done this exact thing a dozen times.

Don't try to wing it.

 

[Reda_ELF]

Hello everyone,

We're in the early planning phase of building a new hotel and currently evaluating how best to structure the network infrastructure. I'd greatly appreciate advice from anyone with experience in hospitality network design or general enterprise networking.

We are trying to decide between two design approaches:

1. Converged Network (Single Fiber Uplink)
All services (Internet, IPTV, PBX/phones, surveillance, building management systems, etc.) would be carried over a single fiber uplink from the core to each floor or room. From there, distribution switches would break out traffic to the appropriate devices via VLANs or segmented ports.

2. Traditional Network (Separate Cables per Service)
Each service (e.g., PBX, IPTV, surveillance, data) would have its own dedicated Ethernet or fiber run, with separate floor racks or panels for distribution.
Thanks in advance for your time and input!

 

[bill001g]

You got some replies on your other post that gave general guidance.

The other post was closed by a admin because this is not a do it yourself thing. You are talking about fairly advanced concepts and you would know basic stuff like this if you were qualified to do this work. Again the real answer is to hire a professional. The design part costs nothing compared to the actual installation. Many will "give?" you the design as part of the contract to install it.

The only new detail is it seem if you are asking if you should use vlans rather than physical separate infrastructure.

Not sure the real question. It seem you know the trade off. Vlans is going to be a lot cheaper but there is the rare risk of single point equipment failure. Security issues are about the same. One is a software misconfiguration and the other is the confusion of multiple cables and someone plugging it into the wrong network.

Almost everyone does vlans unless you are the government and dealing with actual top secreat stuff.

 

[cruisetung]

Call professionals and ask them to make presentations.

==

Some Googled info.

Top-Rated Network and Phone Systems for Hospitality Facilities

Looking for network installation and structured cabling at your hotel or restaurant? Get in touch with one of our experts today!

thenetworkinstallers.com

https://www.corning.com/in-building-networks/worldwide/en/home/verticals/hospitality.html

https://www.crowncastle.com/industries/hospitality

 

[Reda_ELF]

Hello everyone,

We are in the design phase of building a full network infrastructure for a hotel. The services involved include PBX (telephony), IPTV, PMS (Property Management System), surveillance cameras, Internet access, and any other services that require Ethernet connectivity (RJ45).
We are considering two possible approaches:

1. Separate cabling setup – Each service would have its own dedicated Ethernet cabling (e.g., one for phones, another for cameras, another for IPTV, etc.).
2. Converged fiber backbone setup – All services would connect to a customized central switch, and this switch would have a single fiber optic uplink that carries all the services combined. This fiber would then be distributed to other switches or endpoints.

We’d really appreciate your advice on which architecture is more reliable and scalable for a hotel environment. Are there any risks, trade-offs, or best practices we should be aware of with either approach?
Thanks in advance for your insights!

 

[kanewolf]

Hello everyone,

We are in the design phase of building a full network infrastructure for a hotel. The services involved include PBX (telephony), IPTV, PMS (Property Management System), surveillance cameras, Internet access, and any other services that require Ethernet connectivity (RJ45).
We are considering two possible approaches:

1. Separate cabling setup – Each service would have its own dedicated Ethernet cabling (e.g., one for phones, another for cameras, another for IPTV, etc.).
2. Converged fiber backbone setup – All services would connect to a customized central switch, and this switch would have a single fiber optic uplink that carries all the services combined. This fiber would then be distributed to other switches or endpoints.

We’d really appreciate your advice on which architecture is more reliable and scalable for a hotel environment. Are there any risks, trade-offs, or best practices we should be aware of with either approach?
Thanks in advance for your insights!

You don't describe how many total floors, or square feet. The answer usually depends on scale. But, no matter what "a single" anything is not a good design for a high availability commercial environment. If you do pull fiber, you always pull a 4 pair trunk rather than a single pair, for example. Think about failure scenarios. What is "down" for each component that can fail.

 

[COLGeek]

This topic has been reopened. Please do not create multiple threads on the same topic.

Three threads have been combined here.

This is still something that professional consultants should be called for, as many have pointed out.

There are more complexities to this than typically covered in a public tech forum.

 

[ajohnson30]

Also seems like it could be a homework assignment? Just saying...