Hi I am involved in setting up a network for a building and would like some experts here to take a look at the planned configuration. It is a 5 story building. The central server (Windows 2003, running a file server and an email server) will be on the 4th floor along with the main router. Is it feasable to connect each floor to the router using this configuration: --Rotuer connecting to switch5 (5th floor) and switch4 (4th floor); --switch5 connecting to many rj45 wall outlets on the 5th floor; --switch4 connecting to many wall rj45 outlets on the 4th floor, as well as switch3 (3rd floor); --switch3 connecting to many wall rj45 outlets on the 3rd floor, as well as switch2 (2nd floor); --switch2 connecting to many wall rj45 outlets on the 2nd floor, as well as switch1 (1st floor); --switch1 connecting to many wall rj45 outlets on the 1st floor. Additionally, each switch will connect to a wireless router for a WLAN on each floor, but switch1 will also connect to another wireless router in the basement. I was planning to use normal, home wirless routers and add access points as necessary. I was thinking about 5 24 port switches (each floor), 6 wireless routers (+ APs if needed), Will the TCP/IP configuration be difficult using the switch to switch method I described? There are about 45 PCs that will be connected to the internet and server. Would a patch panel be very useful here? I understand it's just for convenience's sake, and since we only have a few wires actually running *from* the main router, it seems unneeded ... Is a four port router enough (for the main router)? Thanks for taking the time to read my post. Any help, suggestions, critique, etc. would be greatly appreciated. If you need any more details just ask. Thanks!

Bad design. Never cascade switches. For example if switch3 died you lost three floors [1,2 &3]. Home runned to the the backbone you would only lose floor three [but being smart you had an exact same switch on the shelf along with the backup of the switch config so floor three is back online within 30minutes] Each floors switch connection should terminate in the server room to a gigabit backbone switch. All switches should be managed switches. Any thing less will bite you in the butt later when you want to do vlans, etc. You can use SOHO wireless routers as access points but not as routers or you will have a nightmare with subnets. Config as follows; http://kbserver.netgear.com/kb_web_... Just think that the router its connected to is a switch instead. Do NOT use a home [soho] router for your buildings/company's internet access!!! Only use a enterprise device with firewall/SPI etc. The buildings security depends on it. Get a Sonicwall [or similiar appliance] which, with subscriptions, can filter on virus's, spyware and spam. It would connect to the backbone switch in the server room. One server running Exchange/email is not even close to enough with that many nodes. You should minimumly have two DCs and one member server running Exchange. File and app servers are additional. All servers, and switches should be on UPS's. Last but not least is power and airconditioning in the server room. Most forget about this until its too late and have to spend big bucks retrofitting. Figure how many pieces of equipment you have, double it, times that by 1000btu per hour and that should give you a rough idea of how many tons of airconditioner you will need. Imagine the power if you knew how to internet search

Thanks a lot for the reply. I have a few questions. "Bad design. Never cascade switches. Each floors switch connection should terminate in the server room to a gigabit backbone switch. All switches should be managed switches. Any thing less will bite you in the butt later when you want to do vlans, etc." OK. But, should each floor also be gigabit, or does just the main one need that kind of bandwidth, because current PCs don't have gigabit NICs? (btw, the current setup from before is every computer connected through switches and hubs to the main DSL router, and they said the internet was fast enough [!]) OK, managed switches seem to make sense. "You can use SOHO wireless routers as access points but not as routers or you will have a nightmare with subnets. Config as follows; http://kbserver.netgear.com/kb_web_... " Thanks for the helpful link. I haven't raed it all yet, but I plan to. "Do NOT use a home [soho] router for your buildings/company's internet access!!! Only use a enterprise device with firewall/SPI etc. The buildings security depends on it. Get a Sonicwall [or similiar appliance] which, with subscriptions, can filter on virus's, spyware and spam." Yeah, I was thinking one of those routers from Cisco with built-in firewall etc., but only a four port is enough, right? See http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products... for example. "One server running Exchange/email is not even close to enough with that many nodes. You should minimumly have two DCs and one member server running Exchange. File and app servers are additional." Wow, I did not know that. So, definitely separate servers for email and file serving? I also have a question about this line from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsser... "...one server license is required for each copy of the server software installed. In addition, a Windows Server 2003 Client Access License (CAL) is required for each user or device (or combination of both) that accesses or uses the server software." What exactly are these licenses for? Simply for each device to access files on the Server 2003 installation? Thanks a lot wanderer for the help, and anyone else who wants to jump in is welcome.

Q1. You want gigabit uplinks from each switch to the gigabit backbone switch. Lan ports to pcs can be 100mb but just think if you had 24 100mb ports going to one 100mb uplink. Pretty slow for those 24 pcs to get to the server since they are all competing for the same 100mb pipe. Q2. Router/firewall only needs one lan port. That lan port at 100mb is still going to be extremely fast compared to 1-4mb internet speed. Q3. Exchange is a beast. It does so much. It needs your max horsepower. The DC's don't need to be as heavy duty. I look at it like this; All servers need network bandwidth [I do adapter teaming to create a 2gig pipe to the backbone switch (4000mbps full duplex)]. All servers should have a minimum of 4gig of ram. 8-12gig if running databases, enterprise or clustering. Two cpus which with hyperthreading gets you 4 processors. Then it comes down to disk subsystem. Exchange needs the best you can give it. Scsi drives [never SATA in a server imo] on dual channel controller [more on optimizing this later if interested] whereas a DC doesn't need as robust of a disk subsystem. Q4 Licensing. Always a not-so-fun topic. You have to have a server license for each server and for each server app. For example you would need a server 2003 license as well as an Exchange server license just for one exchange server. Then you have the choice of per user or per device for client access licenses. You need a CAL for each user/device accessing the server. You also need a CAL for each server app like Exchange. So a wkst would have a license for XP, a CAL to access the server and a CAL for accessing Exchange. Now you can see why Bill Gates is the richest man in the world. Imagine the power if you knew how to internet search

I agree with a lot of the recommendations. To answer your question about patch panels, if it were me, I would be using patch panels on every floor, including your server room. On each floor you should have a dedicated closet where your switch will be. You should also put your patch panel here. All of the RJ45 wall-jackets should have runs to the back of this patch panel. You need to label everything, and I mean everything, so you know what goes to where. Then you will need short patch cables to connect the patch panel ports to the switch ports. I would also put a patch panel in your main server room. All of your homeruns from your individual wiring closet switches to the main server room should first terminate into the patch panel in the server room. From there, again use patch cords to jump from the patch panel to your main switch. With regards to the gigabit switches, in general the "core" of your network should be home to electronics that offer the most bandwidth. So, it may be a good idea to at least get a gigabit switch for your server room. But to answer your question about the individual wiring closets, you are right. If you install gigabit switches on each floor, and the NIC's in the PC's are only 10/100 compatible, they are only going to realize 100 Mbps at best. However, you should always plan in advance. Who knows, maybe one day you will end up replacing all of the NIC's with gigabit cards. At that point, you will probably be glad you purchased the higher-bandwidth switches. In terms of the number of servers to use, best practice is one per service, however its usually more practical and cost-effective to combine services such as DNS & DHCP on maching already acting as a DC. It all depends on the number of services you plan on providing to your LAN.

I would add to SmittyZ3M's excellent points that wiring should all be CAT6 which supports gigabit speeds [as does 5e but that standard is getting outdated quickly] You should also wire CAT6 for phones. You may just use one pair per phone now but may wish to have VoIP as a telephone system option. Imagine the power if you knew how to internet search

wanderer makes another good point about the CAT6. CAT5E spools are still readily available but CAT6 would be the wiser choice. I was at Best Buy the other day and all of the premade cables for sale were CAT6... I am an advocate and user of Microsoft Server products, however I also support and administer Linux based solutions. Obviously Windows 2003 Server is probably your best best for a DC, DHCP, and local DNS. But, if you have Linux experience, or have the time to learn Linux, it comes highly recommended. You could spend the $$ for the hardware, but go on the Internet and download the latest flavor of Fedora Core for free. I am running Red Hat Professional 9 on two servers. Some of the services I have running on these boxes are DNS, FTP, SSH, HTTP, and SMTP. You could use a Linux box as your mail server. Were your intentions behind using Exchange for local mailing purposes only (messages exchanged to and from users on the LAN ONLY) or are you planning on hosting your own Internet e-mail, i.e. you@yourdomain.com? What type of connection to the Internet are you going to use? Answering this question will assist in your purchase of the right type of router.