Hi... i'm currently working on a Network Diagram for a school project... the scope of the project is to create the physical/logical layout of 3 remote LAN's and connect them to create a WAN...

i was wanting to know if i could get some advice from some real world people on actually connecting 3 remote LAN's (Ethernet/Star topology)... the size of the LAN's are relativly small... around 30-40 nodes including switches/routers/printers... i would implement a full T1 as the internet connection for each LAN...

now i know a zillion other things need to be broken down in order to actually create/design/implement an actual working network but i'm hungry for all the "real world" knowledge i can get... the book/tech school can be a little dry and vague...

When you say '3 remote LANs', does this mean 3 different networks??? I don't quite get what you mean by creating 3 differnt networks and connecting them creating a LAN. Maybe someone else may reply who does. But are you making us do your homework for you? I was just asking, lol.

"connecting them creating a LAN"

I meant creating a WAN, sorry.

Personally, I would use VLAN's for this and VLAN capable routers and switches. This is great for segmenting portions of the network from each other. For example, financial information doesn't need to be accessed by basic users not in the account dept. Also, a separate network for your servers isn't a bad idea. Also, a separate printer network can be a good idea.

A couple of the biggest benefits to VLAN tagging is that regardless of physical location, all VLANS are basically a single contiguous network. Also, VLAN tagging is a lot faster for the routers to handle than normal routing.

Where I work, we have 5 sites all connected with multiple VLAN's in each site. Presently we have one main router handling all the routing and all our switches are managable and VLAN tagging capable.

We have dedicated 60 Mbps fibre connections between each site in a hub and spoke topology and will soon be upgrading to a single 100 Mbps (from our present 10 Mbps) internet connection at our main site which will feed the internet to all remote sites.

I full T1 as the internet connection is usually beat in speed and cost by better DSL or cable connections.

RWD1996: not asking anybody to do my homework... i know you people are quick to call somebody out on that as opposed to just spreading knowledge...

maybe i didn't mention this before but i'm in a very basic datacomm phase in school... i'm learing basic info about Frame Relay, ATM, various WAN topologies, etc... but i know none of this comes into play in this situation...

when i say "3 remote LANs", i mean 3 different networks... in different locations... maybe 2 of them are in the same city and the third is 50 miles away in a another city... but they are all created by the same company... and users should have access to all three servers in each location...

sorry, i know alot of you people are actually in the field and the things you do in your everyday life are job specific so its hard for you to anwser such a broad question...

i'm just a newbie lookin' at different options as opposed to saying "okay, teacher, these are my LANs, i would connect them with Frame Relay." sadly, this would almost suffice...

Curt R: thank you... i'm looking into this... sounds like an actual real world solution that would meet the needs of the project...

i'd like to know a little more about your workplace... when you say you have 5 sites... what are the geographical locations? are they all within the same city?

and when you say "We have dedicated 60 Mbps fibre connections between each site"... can you tell me a little more about this? did your company actually run the lines or are they leased lines from a provider?

Like I said, I was just asking. That's a common question on here when people mention school projects and the like.

"when i say "3 remote LANs", i mean 3 different networks..."

I just wanted to make sure.

Two sites are in the same town. The other 3 are 130 km's, 150 km's and 350 km's distant (that's 70, 90 and 210 miles respectively).

The province I live in has built a network for education, government, health organisations, libraries etc. It's a fibre optic based network that provides very high bandwidth. These are leased lines.

We have one edge device for each remote site, and one for the internet, located at our main site. That's as well as the edge device located in each remote site. The edge devices are Cisco 3500's and are the property of the provider. They do all the programming and installation. This is a fibre optic connection to their main PoP (Point of Presence) here in town.

Our data is passed through their cloud using VLAN tags. As I said earlier, routers can switch with VLAN's faster than routing the packets. If you want specifics on this, make use of google, there's a ton of info on VLAN tagging and routing and how routers handle them.

The main province wide network provides different levels of service. You can mix and match. We actually have 3, 60 Mbps connections. One each from the main site to the distant ones. The other site in the same town has a 20 Mbps connection. Our main internet connection will be 100 Mbps when we're all said and done.

Of course, the providers edge devices connect into our own edge devices (Nortel Baystack 5510) and then into our firewall/router and from therre to the core switches.