Hi, im working on deploying a new fiber network over a building. This network will handle tv, phones, printer, computer, cameras, etc. Can you help me decide what is the best hardware for my needs? i Have a server room with some servers that i want to link with fiber (3 links total for servers). i have 6 (7 including the server room), network distribution centers over the building where i plan to have on each 48 giga ports (24 poe, and 24 normals). The distance from the server room (last floor on the building) to the last distribution center is less than 200m. What network topology should i use to inter-connect the building? Do i need an SFP router for this? Should i use a ring/chain network or a star topology? What i had on mind was:
So, how should i connect the server room to the network? Can i use one of this: CRS317-1G-16S+RM, using 3 SFP+ interfaces for the servers and the others to each distribution rack? Making a star topology? Help will be apreciated. Thanks!
Star topology is the most flexible, but the centre equipment becomes single point of failure. Alternative would be ring topology with it’s built-in path redundancy, but that one comes with possible throughput bottleneck and more complicated configuration.
Price-wise star topology is in theory cheaper as not all “satelite” points need to be high-performance. On the other hand the central device has to be higher performing as it forwards all traffic between all nodes. The ring topology requires all devices with decent performance even though locally connected devices don’t generate much traffic, it has to be capable of passing all the traffic of the whole network in case ring breaks somewhere.
There are things you can do, should do, and then things best to do. Don’t get overwhelmed. Perfection is an enemy. I know it is annoying, but you really need to create, if only a crude one, a network diagram. It will help you, and us to understand your needs.
Question:
Please clarify your server room. Do you have three servers that will need a single fiber run back to the central switch, or are you asking about three servers with three fiber network cards in them?
whenever 1Gbps is enough and distance is less than 100 m. Price of as SFP is still around 50 euro (give or take 10) which is not neglectable and SFP cage-equiped NICs are not for free either … while 1Gbps ethernet adapters are built-in in every device (with exception of some mikrotik devices)
From distribution racks to devices will be cabled with Cat6. Devicces can be IP cameras or Access points (both PoE) or computer, phones, printers.
In the server room im going to place the main router where all the distribution racks will connect to via fiber. Each server will have an independent SPF interface to connect to the main router. I prefer to have a single center point of failure over a bottleneck over the connection bandwitch. So the hardware i pointed out will be OK for my needs? Thanks for your replies!
CRS definitely will not do as router for any decent routed throughput (e.g. more than a few 10Mbps) with decent number of firewall rules in place. It really depends on what kind of tasks your router will have to perform … but RB4011 seems to have nice performance/cost ratio if it suits your needs.
Thanks for your answer. But with that router i cant make a star topology to inter-connect all switches with fiber as i only have 1 SFP+ interface. I’ll have 8 SFP+ cables going into the server room. Another thing is that actually i have a load balance between 2 wans. Now, re-reading i posted the CRS as main router. My mistake, the one im planning to use is the CCR1016-12S-1S +.
CCR1016 would do. Hower, I still think that RB4011+CRS317-1G-16S would perform better (and combined recommended price is lower than that of CCR). CRS would be used as core switch while RB4011 would be used as ‘router on a stick’, the SFP+ would be used to connect to core switch.
Additionally … your access switches (CRS326/CRS328) have SFP+ while CCR only has SFP … limiting connection speed on star “spokes” to 1Gbps.
If internet for the building is ultimately provided through copper ethernet, then 8 ethernet ports on RB4011 would be right for the task. If, however, internet comes via fibre, then you could plug internet fibres to the core switch, tag (or re-tag) them with VLANs and push them to RB4011 through existing 10Gbps fibre connection.
If combined internet speed is lower than 1Gbps, then you could re-use RB1100AHx4 as “router-on-a-stick”, connecting it to CRS317 using 1Gbps ethernet connection (regardless of the transport media used for internet delivery). It would probably become a bottleneck if it was used for inter-VLAN routing.