Making a new private network.

Question

I want to build a network - private network. I have 80-90 sites with up to 14 hosts on each site. The hosts comunicate with a server. Not much trafic. Can I use a couple of 2924-XL-EN to connect the sites together? And from the switches a connection to another 2924 where I have the server?

Answer 1

Instead of using a complete layer2 network design, I would start looking at Layer3 segmentation and fault isolation. If all 90 sites were connected with nothing but layer2 switches, you would have issues with STP convergance, broadcast storms, etc. Essentially, a single user with a bad nic or virus could take down the entire network. Depending on your requirements, you could do a hub-and-spoke design and have each site connect to a layer3 router at the hub of your design. From this you can provision subinterfaces per site and allow vlans per site. This would shrink the broadcast domain per site, and reduce the risk of a single site taking out the entire network. The layer3 device at the hub could provide inter-vlan routing to provide communication with all the sites. Or if distance is a factor, you could provision a lower end router per site (1710 or something) and have this router connect to a slightly higher end layer3 device (2800 or something depending on your traffic requirements). This would be a more scalable design and allow you to provide more services in the future. If you wanted to go all out with it, you could provision some kind of 2800 per site with a 3800 at the hub. Then you could run MPLS VPNs. Each site would have a router capable of label imposition and your at your hub, your router could function as a P router. You could also place your server into a central services VRF and do selective import and export of the VPN routes. This gives you the ablility to further segment your network (possibly start selling Internet access or service access to various customers) and still keep everything private.
Hope this helps.