[ale] Switch redundancy and physical network layout lameness

[Pat Regan]

Chris Kleeschulte wrote:
> So the result pretty much looks like this, main switch -> small  
> netgear 8 port switch -> accountant's computer, his printer, his  
> assistant's computer, her printer.

100 megabit ethernet only requires 2 out of the 4 pairs of wire.  You
might be able to eliminate some of those switches by just breaking some
of the single ports out into pairs.

I'm sure someone will tell me this is a bad idea.  The way I see it is
that if you don't have the budget to rewire then this could clean up a
lot of cruft inexpensively.

> We tried wireless and this works most of the time, but the building we  
> are in seems to be grand central station for 11000 WAPs and they  
> compete a lot with each other.

Wireless is nice when you have to move a machine around during the day,
but the reliability and bandwidth just aren't there.  If you're lucky
your max throughput will be over 20 megabit.  The more people you put on
one AP, the more collisions you get.  The more collisions you get, the
less effective total bandwidth you have available.

Not to mention the reliability.  I use wifi every day, but I do
sometimes get disconnected for a few seconds at a time.  That would be a
support nightmare with enough users.

> Is this complete bush league or is this something that you have dealt  
> with on the IT management side? I also just can't figure out a cost  
> effective way to make this scheme fault tolerant. Any suggestions  
> would be....excellent.

The more fault tolerant you want to be, the more money you have to spend :).

If you have the ability to wire your switches together in a ring then
you can lose any single switch without any other switch losing connectivity.

Pat

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