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]

Gigabit

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?

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.

[eazeaz]

Power Injectors?

Ummmmm

Seriously? Power Injectors

I think a couple of tin cans and a string might be a better idea

[travisbconley]

why... if he has good switches, then power injectors are a great economical choice. They do nothing to the data....

[Rob Bush]

Budget?

What is your budget on this? A 48 port PoE Gig Cisco 3750 will run you $10k, so knowing what your budget is will help all of us help you in picking the right gear. If all you have budget for is PoE injectors, then there is not a ton more we can help with.

If money is tight, you'd be better of running just one drop to each user instead of two. Two drops means either double the number of switches so that the drop is active, or having one port in a cube active while the other is dead. The user will of course plug in to the dead port at some time and then call you complaining that their PC doesn't work.

If you do two drops to each user, you don't *have* to have a layer 3 switch to segment off the traffic. You could do the same thing with a spare router, or just go with a flat network IP scheme and hope that broadcast traffic doesn't flood your ports.

[Crewdawg]

We had the same delema and went with Adtran 1335s. I am very happy with that decision.

[travisbconley]

I think the bottom line on this is that there are a lot of ways to skin the cat... with more details some additional guidance could be offered though