PoE Switches

[jponeill70]

Hi...I'm looking for a decent suggestion. I'll be needing 3 24 port PoE switches to go with a ST 120/12 switch. I need three b/c one will be on floor that holds our sales crew and two more on our main floor where our main network and staff resides. Would like two 24 port PoE's on the same floor just for redundancy sake.

Thanks!
JPO

[svalles]

Layer 2 or Layer 3? Gigabit or FastEthernet? VLAN's? QOS? the most important question is What are your needs

[jponeill70]

Hi and thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I'm ignorant when it comes to the Layer 2 or Layer 3 aspect. What does that mean?

Right now we have a 10/100 network. We will be relocating our office in the next 12 to 18 mos so switching to gigabit cabling could be in the cards...then we'd have to update our PC's/NIC's and then our Cisco Switches.

Absent the Layer 2/3 issue...I think we'd look at a gigabit situation.

[eazeaz]

We decided on separate physical cabling for phones and pc's.

If you want to run Gigabit on 1 cable with VLANS, then you will need Gigabit POE switches and Gigabit Phones. You are talking about significantly more $.

We use Gigabit switches for the data side and 100MB Addtran POE switches for the Phone Side of the network.

If you are moving to a new location it is the perfect time to address the whole deal.

Are you just one location total?

[cburgy]

If you are looking at going Gigabit to the edge, the best solutions on the market are Juniper (EX3200 or EX4200 switches), Foundry (GS or FESX) and HP (3500 series). It is really difficult to qualify what you should do without significantly more information. The best recommendation will be based on your needs, your environment and future business and technology goals.

[Rob Bush]

How much do you have to spend? That will also decide a lot.

[jponeill70]

Hi...thanks for the replies. Right now we're in one location (two floors tho) that have just one Cat5e run/port to each office/cube. It is nearly guaranteed that we'll be relocating our office in the next 12 to 18 mos. At that time I'd consider running two Cat5/6 cables to each office/cube...just don't see it happening now.

We have two nice Cisco 2950 and 2690 switches that I'd prefer not to lose value on. What kind of power injector or PoE could I use with our current configuration? I've attached our current network configuration.

Can we add a PoE switch in front of or behind the Cisco switches?
Do I need a PoE switch on our first floor (presume that my entire office will be on the same floor/location in 12 to 18 mos)?

As for budget...middle ground. Not too cheap that will cause me heartburn in the future but I don't want a Cadillac either. Don't have a specific $ figure.
Thanks!
JPO

[travisbconley]

my first glance would say you would atleast want to upgrade to a layer 3 capabe switch and eliminate the cisco 1700 between your lan and sonicwall (replacing the sonicwall is a whole seperate discussion) something like a extreme layer 3 switch, or a nice hp layer 3 would do you good. I would save the cable plant costs and run single drops and do vlan and qos setup. But that is just me.

[jponeill70]

Yea...there's a bunch of hurdles (routers) to go thru...I need the Cisco b/w the LAN and SonicWall b/c that's how our remote IT vendor controls/accesses/manages our network. I need the SonicWall to prevent/know what porn sites our sales guys are going to.

It seems I can take a Dell or other PoE switch and place it between our Cisco Switches and Patch Panels...at least that's what I'm beginning to understand. Any disagreements with that?

[travisbconley]

you could, but not sure that is the best solution.... if you have enough capacity with the cisco switches, and the current environment is sufficing for you... I would use power injectors. Now, I don't know if the cisco switches you have currently support QOS, but worse case an IOS upgrade should take care of that.