Apologies if this is off topic or something, I am just not quite sure what the solution I seek looks like yet.
I have the below products connected to a computer. BaseBox 2 - RB912UAG-2HPnD-OUT
RB260GSP - CSS106-1G-4P-1S
RB Groove G52HPacn
My question is regarding up scaling, hypothetically, if I had 50 computers all in one room, rather than having 50 copies of the above hardware, what would be the best way to connect them all into one easily accessible solution?
Each computer has a static Ip address with a web server for a web page to control that particular computer. Ideally I would like something like a server perhaps that I can connect to, to see which of the 50 computers are online and access their individual networks/web page.
also do I perhaps need totally different networking equipment or can this be done with my current set up.
Any ideas as to how this would work, if at all, would be greatly welcome.
Not sure what the network topology should be, but for 50 computers you need 50 ports. A single router may or may not be sufficient to handle all the PCs, depending on the expected amount of traffic and on firewalling requirements, so your existing one may do or you may need something more powerful. So two 24-port devices such as CSS326-24G-2S+RM are sufficient to connect 46 PCs without SFPs (and all 50 PCs if equipped with two copper SFPs each, but it is cheaper to use another RB260GS to provide the remaining 4 ports for PCs). The above is true if you connect three switches into a star topology around a central RB260GS but also if you create a line of all four of them (22 ports per CSS326 and 3 per RB260GS for PCs, the rest for interconnection), but you don’t have enough ports for a ring.
All the above is true with no requirements on resilience; if they exist, you should have everything doubled, including the PCs or at least the network cards on them and the internet uplink, and use techniques like VRRP and OSPF/BGP to provide redundancy on LAN and WAN side.
Thank you for your reply, this is awesome! I need to sit and study your reply a little to see what the next step would be but thank you.
With regards to an interface for all of these connected machines, what would be the options?
Additionally if anyone else has had experience with this I would greatly appreciate your input. I am fairly new to networking but the aforementioned scenario could become a reality and I need to be prepared for it.
A pencil and a paper are your best friends when thinking of the physical network topology. However, what I wrote was the maximum I could do based on the input information. Once you provide more input about the overall topology of the network, number of available IP addresses, type of traffic between your 50 PCs and the internet and (possibly) from one PC to another, me or someone else may tell you more regarding the possible solutions.