Need help with a network that's gone through major growth spurt recently

[NETWizz]

I wish I chimed in earlier. My suggestion is to NOT make this hard on yourself, which you are doing.

I do not know about those particular switches, but ensure you get switches that support stacking and setup one big stack if they are all in the same rack.

Wire it patch panel 2U, 1U switch, 1 U empty space.... and repeat, Use 1' jumper cables WITHOUT boots.

Now for the VOIP, search for an article I posted a few years ago about VLANS, but I highly suggest you NOT setup separate equipment for VoIP to make it easier because it will NOT be. Instead, setup separate VLANS ensuring each port has a data VLAN and a voice VLAN assigned. Each manufacturer does it differently. On Cisco Gear Voice VLAN sets an 802.1q tag and turns on CDP and LLDP-MED to identify that VLAN to the phones. I am NOT sure how Microtek works, but it is almost certainly the same. Anyway, the data VLAN is simple untagged layer-2 frames.

This will prevent calls for computers not working attached to VoIP ports and vice versa. Additionally, many phones have a built-in switch. You plug the phone into the wall port. Then you plug the computer into the switchport on the phone. The Phone joins the Voice VLAN on the Voice Network, and the computer joins the data network.

Regarding your Internet, how are you balancing two connections? Does that Meraki device balance it? Does it have any fiber transceiver slots? Does it serve as a firewall? Usually for Internet circuits I attach them to a dedicated firewall device. For a small network like this one, a Palo Alto PA 220 would be what I would spec.


I would HIGHLY recommend switches that fully support QoS as well all the way to the VoIP circuit. Regarding your VLANS I see you need four (4) most likely.

Data
Voice
Uplink to your Internet
Wireless

Now, if you have fiber Internet coming in direct fiber hand-off, you can create another VLAN and use it as a media converter.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Do you buy that SKU from Monoprice or do you have a different brand and vendor?

Sometimes...
Other times from another vendor somewhat local....but I'd guess from Mono most of the time.

 

[HCHTech]

I wish I chimed in earlier. My suggestion is to NOT make this hard on yourself, which you are doing.

I do not know about those particular switches, but ensure you get switches that support stacking and setup one big stack if they are all in the same rack.

Wire it patch panel 2U, 1U switch, 1 U empty space.... and repeat, Use 1' jumper cables WITHOUT boots.

Now for the VOIP,

This guy networks. I don't know what in the hell he is talking about half the time, but I'd guarantee it is correct. I'd hire him in a New-York-minute to design and spec a complicated setup if I ever ran into one like this.

 

[Sky-Knight]

This guy networks. I don't know what in the hell he is talking about half the time, but I'd guarantee it is correct. I'd hire him in a New-York-minute to design and spec a complicated setup if I ever ran into one like this.

He's working with more expensive networking gear. A "stack" is basically a special patch cable that connects on the rear of the switch along with the power feed. High end switches have the ability to connect back there, and in effect make all of the switches one huge switch controlled as a single unit.

So instead of having patch cables linking switches to each other, you just have a bunch of holes on the front to connect devices, the switch fabric is already built.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Yeah we used to do lots of "stacked" servers for huge places, like big nursing homes, schools in the old days, etc. Wicked high density setups, and ...heck going way way back, those huge HP Procurve "blade switches"....
These days with uplinks ports at the next speed level...not needed as much. But stacked switches would uplink at backplane speeds instead of individual port speeds. Was nice in the days when everything was just 100 megs. And manglement wise... the way Unifi does port profiles....just as easy to manage a bunch of Unifi switches the traditional way anyways. But yes in the old days management of the big "stack" was easier with true stacked switches.

 

[Stever]

And once the install is done they rearrange the office for whatever reason
Some dark cable runs coiled up in sutible places are essential along with emphasis that the cables are there and ready for the unexpected
Insert a horror story of your choice, typicaly about stuff being rearrange and an office floor non PoE switch being added hidden in the broom cuboard to a PoE connection by someone un known

 

[NETWizz]

There is the good, the bad, and the ugly. This one below ranks bad (you don't want to see ugly)

Here is the Before and After if you do it my way... and you don't have to mess with organizers, weaving cable in silly holders, dealing with excess length. None of that fluff that wastes your time.




If you recall I spoke about how I organize nice clean racks. The way to do it is always buy 1 cables (1/3rd of 1 Meter).

1' Cables! NO BOOT. The Boot makes it HARD to remove from switchports damaging equipment sometimes! Also the Boot squishes the cables putting tension on switch ports.

Please, do NOT tell me I am wrong on this until you have disconnected as many as 1,200+ patch cables in one evening with boots on them!

Discard all those Bogus cable managers.

This is the recipe for success:

2U Patch Panel
1U Switch
1U [Empty Space]

UPS units (two of them if you have 2 Power supplies per switch) at bottom.

Here is a wiring closet I did June 5th, 2017 (before I scrubbed the metadata for upload to clear GPS). The building here has a full Eaton UPS system to the network closets, so there is full power redundancy. In fact, each of those cheap power strips on the floor are connected to different UPS outlets A and B. There are two such that nobody can accidentally cut power to both.








What I do not know why looking at it is why both pairs of multimode fiber are going to the bottom switch. My standard operating procedure is to create an etherchannel/LAG to double the bandwidth and uplink via two different physical chassis, so if one physical switch fails at worse it degrades the uplink to the upstream wiring closet by half and at most knocks 48 devices off the network. I think this setup might have been due to a firmware bug in 08.0.61x of the FastIron ICX that was corrected long ago. I do remember going back and moving a bunch of fiber and changing the LAG configureation in this particular building.

 

[NETWizz]

This site is actually big enough that there is a Core, Aggregation/Distribution, and Edge. The Above post is a closet going to edge devices.

THIS is the Aggregation/Distribution explained.:


Basically, I do Layer-2 between the Aggregation/Distribution and Edge by Stretching VLANS into wiring closets via 802.1q tagged ethernet frames (FRAME is the PDU for Layer-2 where PACKET is the PDU for Layer-3)

From the Aggregation/Distribution to the Core I use OSPF. If I create a new Subnet or VLAN, I create it at the Aggregation/Distribution Layer and stretch it into any area(s) of the building I desire via into the closets like the one in the above post. OSPF then advertises it to the Core's main routing table for a site.

I wanted to expound further regarding the two pairs of fibers and why I stack... When you construct a network, please do what I do and make a map or legend explaining it.

In this case, there are two pairs of fiber in this wiring closet. This is a complex with Two(2) Buildings in that an addition was built. Lets say it is ScottsAerosmith Complex and the original building was the Scotts building and the addition was Aerosmith

The TOP row is for Scotts
the BOTTOM row is for Aerosmith

I changed the name to not disclose where I work.

It is then chopped up by four (4) floors. VLANS are assigned. This particular complex is in the 200's just because that is how it was before I worked for this organization that has around 80 sites, but for example VLAN 211 means 1st floor 1st closet... 212 would be 1st floor second closet 213 is still first floor. 22x is second floor, 23x is third floor etc. When I did the Voice I came up with this... VoIP VLAN here is 2110 for example for the Data VLAN 211 for example. For VLAN 242 the Voice VLAN will be 2420. Did I mention the data subnets are like 10.241.x.x/x for VLAN 241 ?

Yeah. I like to keep it simple stupid (KISS)

This is the closet where that closet from the post above and 12 others like it uplink:




This MAP I make is broken down by building and floor. All the ODD number are in the original Scotts building and all even numbered ports (bottom row) are Aerosmith. On a more current map above I do not have with me it is actually printed next to the row.

The wiring closet in the post above is on the second floor. I am fairly certain it is in Aerosmith 2370, which makes it VLAN 221. Notice it says Port 14 (14 is an even numbered port BOTTOM row). Notice it is in the BLUE section like all second floor closets.

On BOTH switches, Port 14 in the same LAG which treats two physical interfaces as one logical interface. That is ethernet 1/1/14 and 2/1/14 on these Brocade 7450 units.

1/x/x refers to the switch chassis, x/1/x refers to the module in this case those 48 SFP slots, and x/x/14 refers to a port on a module.
2/1/14 means second switch, the group of 48 ports, 14th interface.

Creating a LAG is this easy:
device# configure terminal
device(config)# lag Aerosmith2270
device(config-lag-blue)#ports ethernet 1/1/14 ethernet 2/1/14

Commscope Technical Content Portal

docs.commscope.com

I do not bother typing out "dynamic id auto" because that is what it does by default anyway. Let's say it assigned this lag1

There is now actually an interface on the switch in Show Interfaces listed as Lag1 and it will be named "Aerosmith2270"


I can now create a VLAN say vlan 221 and then ADD "tagged lag1"

It will now carry via 802.1q VLAN 221 over that LAG. Lag1 already has the bandwidth of both ports 1/1/14 and 2/1/14


If one of these units fail or a switch in a closet fails, the network stays operational. I hope that helps.

ALWAYS label what you are doing!

 

[Sky-Knight]

I'll ditto the no boots thing... even if you get nice cables with supple boots... they don't age well. And forget pulling off 1000s of ends at that point... you'll be spitting four letter words like a gansta rapper that stubbed his toe before you clear out your first switch! I got pretty good at just bypassing the things with my pocket knife, but who has time for that crap?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Want to see neat wiring? Look at Sprinters work..

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=2362057467274072

 

[Markverhyden]

As I sit here thinking about it I’m liking the thought of having the phones all physically on their own network using the fiber connection, then all the PCs and related items on their own network using the coax.

The only time I see that being done is if the VoIP is a third party managed service, not self maintained. Personally I'd keep it all on one provider then flip it over if the primary goes down. The reality is phone traffic is nothing like it was even 5 years ago.

 

[timeshifter]

The reality is phone traffic is nothing like it was even 5 years ago.

What do you mean by that?

 

[NETWizz]

Want to see neat wiring? Look at Sprinters work..

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=2362057467274072

I just don’t like those 24 port patch panels because the waste half a 48 port swirch unless you put one above and below the switch which is more work.

Not a fan of those booted cables on some switches they can cause port damage, and they are hard to remove.

6” cables are a bit short sometimes... probably more of a problem with 48 port patch panels.

Speinter’s work looks good, but it’s not how I would do it except if o came on site and it was like that already, then I just go with the flow

 

[timeshifter]

I just don’t like those 24 port patch panels because the waste half a 48 port swirch unless you put one above and below the switch which is more work.

I think he said that's what the customer specced, they didn't want full utilization of the switches, hence only half used.

Also, what do you mean by booted cables? I guess you mean the ends have more than just an RJ45, kind of a molded piece. I do like how that piece is translucent so. you can see the port LEDs easily.

 

[SAFCasper]

This is how ours looks. 48 port switches are filled mostly with 24 from above + 24 from below using 0.3m patch leads. Anything that needs ran further can go horizontally on the cable management bars before being run vertically in the side of the rack. If rack space was a major concern we could go without the cable management bars but they do come in handy.

Top switch is 16-Port SFP+ which we use for aggregation using 10GB DAC for the uplinks and from Hyper-V hosts, Firewall etc. Also have 2x UPS in the bottom but it's cut off in this image.

Standard config is every port untagged on our workstations network + tagged on our voice network. Same principal as others have described where our DHCP server uses LLDP to automatically put phones on the correct VLAN.

Only reason I can accept for physically separating VOICE and DATA is to save costs. Phones generally need PoE while workstations generally don't. So maybe only one of your switches would need to be PoE instead of all. The downside is phones only working on specific ports instead of just working anywhere.

 

[Markverhyden]

What do you mean by that?

Voice communications have decreased over the years in general. I've not any reports to back this up, so that conclusion is more anecdotal but I believe is valid. 15 years ago, when I was in retail stores doing work, the phones would be ringing pretty regularly. Now a days I can be in a store for several hours and not hear the phone ring. And this isn't some dinky chain, I've seen this at large stores like TJMax and Walmart.

The shrinkage is coming from both directions. The customer side as well as the business side. So many people have smart phones/tablets, not only are they used to using chat, messages and email to communicate personally the behavior bleeds over to C2B. On the business side answering the phone means payroll. And these comms changes have also bled over to B2B. Over the years many companies I do boots on the ground for have moved work processes which don't include any voice communication with anyone unless there is a serious problem.

But voice is still necessary. In the consumer world most every one uses cell phones so they don't need home phones. Businesses are different because they have to keep that channel available.

 

[Stever]

Voice communications have decreased over the years in general. I've not any reports to back this up, so that conclusion is more anecdotal but I believe is valid. 15 years ago, when I was in retail stores doing work, the phones would be ringing pretty regularly. Now a days I can be in a store for several hours and not hear the phone ring. And this isn't some dinky chain, I've seen this at large stores like TJMax and Walmart.

The shrinkage is coming from both directions. The customer side as well as the business side. So many people have smart phones/tablets, not only are they used to using chat, messages and email to communicate personally the behavior bleeds over to C2B. On the business side answering the phone means payroll. And these comms changes have also bled over to B2B. Over the years many companies I do boots on the ground for have moved work processes which don't include any voice communication with anyone unless there is a serious problem.

But voice is still necessary. In the consumer world most every one uses cell phones so they don't need home phones. Businesses are different because they have to keep that channel available.

Part of the voice shrinkage must be due to expecting that these days you will be put through to an Indian call center
Using a text option at least looks like the person on the other end speaks English
I have spent time on the other end of txt support and can tell you that very little is typed live, the sytems have pre loaded txt that is selected by typing shortcuts or via a dropdown menu, the longer that you use the system then the more that you just use the pre loaded txt
The system that I used alowed me to add my own txt and the shortcut to call it.
Age is another issue, as phone txt became a thing, so kids learned to txt faster than those that learned on traditional keyboards and find it easyer to use than the poor grammer that a lot of them have when speaking, those kids are now adults

 

[Computer Bloke]

so kids ... find it easyer to use than the poor grammer that a lot of them have when speaking

On the other hand, autocorrect makes it easier not to make two spelling mistakes in a single sentence complaining about their poor grammar.

 

[Stever]

On the other hand, autocorrect makes it easier not to make two spelling mistakes in a single sentence complaining about their poor grammar.

I do rely heavily on the smell checker / auto errect
It's after hours so I relax and do not worry about typing and reading fluent Typoese while multi tasking during a Big Clive live live steam with the wife on the phone in the background

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Pretty sure the patch cables Chris did are not booted. Except for the greenies on the left which looks separate like the VoIP providers setup. But the clear thin ones...looks non booted to me, just plain clear ends. Those are what we get. Nothing covering the snap. I like 6" vs 12" for those up close ones...no need to have big bowtie loops. Density wise, 1U against 1U is fine, cooling in them keeps air moving, lots of studies showing that having a 1U gap 'tween 1U servers or 1U switches doesn't help chassis temps.....the fans are there for a reason, let 'em earn their keep.