Tue Feb 07, 2023 3:04 pm
Hopefully my topic is appropriate for this forum. I have a task at work to revamp our network and optimize a typical flat network that has grown over many years of cascading switches. With the company growth network demands are taking a toll on network performance. We have a typical network of switches throughout the building within a domain environment and one firewall/gateway. After alot of research and going back and forth, although unexperienced with the products themselves Mikrotik seems to offer the best performance for the money. Currently I am building out a new server room that is going to house all new infrastructure in the future and simply connect the old rack to the new rack. I want to get away from our flat network of connected switches and start creating a more hybrid setup where the switches will tie back to a core/aggregation switch and allow for better distribution. I am starting to get really confused with which product will suit our needs but yet allow someone inexperienced with the product to get up and running quickly with a base setup. For joining the old and new rack I have decided on the CRS354-48G-4S+2Q+RM on each end and connecting them their QSFP+ ports, this should accomplish extending the netowrk into the new location. Where I am getting a bit confused is what product could be used as an aggregegation switch ( I am trying to not require a core to keep costs down) I have 2 porducts in my mind the CRS518-16XS-2XQ or the CRS326-24S+2Q+RM, which the the 518 can only run RouterOS. The goal is to have any new and possibly some existing old switches all tie back into the new server location and instead of cascading the switched they will connect direcly into this (aggregation) switch. I really hope my explantion is making sense, all these upgrades are too eventually seperate the departments into VLANS but offer the best overall network performance by optimzing the network paths. Any suggestions or if you think I am way off track, please let me know, I don't know where else to turn to get some real help in this task. Thank you.