Whats your "max" hop count?

[frederick]

I ran in to this yesterday, client had a SonicWALL T150, that went in to a Linksys Router. From there, a single Cat5e went to a 24-Port Switch, with a daisy chain thing going on. Each switch had another switch tethered to it, which had another and so on. It was a total of 100 systems + 108 VoIP Phones (with built in switch). A run went to a phone, and another run to a system. Then the 15 printers, and 3 servers. In total, 226 devices, with 12 switches (24-ports each). So the far switch had to make 13 hops in order to get to get out. The majority of the building complained about extremely slow speeds (they are paying for a Bonded Cable Line of about 120Mbps x 40Mbps total bandwidth). It's a really nice, professionally installed structured cabling. But one thing went through my mind, after 4 different IT companies, not a single one asked the question "Whats with this daisy chain thing going on here for a bazillion hops?" It's all a single private network, no VLAN's, or anything special. I got the whole thing down to a hierarchical switch configuration to basically group everything into Zones/Departments, Computers plug in to the phones rather than straight to the switch. Got it down to SonicWall > Router > Switch > Switch > Phone > Computer, and was able to just turn off the extra switches. I'm going to propose to the client later today to upgrade the switches from 24-port 10/100 to a 48-port Gigabit to lower the number of hops, and do some bonding between the routers and switches to help increase overall LAN speed, and decrease the number of hops even further.

So what are your guys ideal / max hop count?

 

[angry_geek]

I'm curious as to why they have a linksys router behind the sonicwall. Depending on the configuration, they could be having some nat issues as well. Also, is the facility just too big to have everything coming from a common network room? Also check those phones. Most of them only have 10/100 switching capacity.

We've used the Dell 55xx series switches with HDMI stacking and have been blown away with performance. We use them in environments where we have everything in one networking room, though.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Yeah I've seen those setups.....I've seen "hops" into the double digits. Typically in conjunction with CAT cable typically strewn across floors, hanging down from the ceiling, all that stuff.

Prefer 1x run per device right into a patch panel. From the patch panel, a jump to the switch. Properly uplinked switches...if more than 3 switches, make one the head switch that other switches under it uplink to, along with the router uplink. Think "pyramid".

Often 2x hops have to happen. But I really try to never allow 3.

 

[frederick]

I'm curious as to why they have a linksys router behind the sonicwall. Depending on the configuration, they could be having some nat issues as well. Also, is the facility just too big to have everything coming from a common network room? Also check those phones. Most of them only have 10/100 switching capacity.

We've used the Dell 55xx series switches with HDMI stacking and have been blown away with performance. We use them in environments where we have everything in one networking room, though.

It's an office building with the Comm Room practically center. Longest run(s) are at 82m from switch to switch/phone. The last IT Company came in and upgraded the phones from some junker 10M (not even 10/100) to the SPA514G. The bottlenecks are the routers and switches. NAT issues? No, not that I've seen, only been with this client for a week though. I want to get the router gone, it's only there cause of the PBX features built into it, but one server is an ESXi build, running only two Linux Servers, and it has 4 Gigabit Ports (1 in use, the other 3 unplugged), that I'm going to try to convince to have a PBX installed on, and then ditch this junk router.

I'm also considering tossing the SonicWALL and getting something a little more...beastly... It's a bottleneck, when I jacked right into the sonicwall directly, I couldn't get above 80Mbps down, so they are wasting 40Mbps down. If they had under <25 clients, I'd have no problem with the TZ105.

I'd love to run and implement a 10GBaseSR, but that would exceed my budget for the 3 month contract we got by about....oh...I don't know....ALOT!!!!

 

[frederick]

Yeah I've seen those setups.....I've seen "hops" into the double digits. Typically in conjunction with CAT cable typically strewn across floors, hanging down from the ceiling, all that stuff.

Prefer 1x run per device right into a patch panel. From the patch panel, a jump to the switch. Properly uplinked switches...if more than 3 switches, make one the head switch that other switches under it uplink to, along with the router uplink. Think "pyramid".

Often 2x hops have to happen. But I really try to never allow 3.

I do my best to avoid 3, but at the same time, I'm ok with 3. 4 can be avoided if you do it right, and 5 is a no...just...no.

 

[angry_geek]

Yeah, they really need at least an nsa series in there, tz 100 series is only rated for rather small offices. You've got your work cut out for you there. Sounds like it's cabled well, though. I'd start looking at just getting a new switch stack and utm in.

 

[smashedbotatos]

Daisy chaining like that annoys me, and I really hooe you are not talking about a home grade Linksys router. They can splurge on all those switches, but not a proper router?

I have a rule of thumb, 2 hops max for workstations/servers/phones. 3 hops max for printers/ipcams and only if they HAVE to be more than two.

 

[angry_geek]

I would imagine it's a modified wrt. I've seen them several times for voip setups.

 

[frederick]

I have a rule of thumb, 2 hops max for workstations/servers/phones. 3 hops max for printers/ipcams and only if they HAVE to be more than two.

Agreed. Systems need to be as close to the wall as possible. Since printers would be inside the LAN, they can be at that 3rd hop, and shouldn't be a problem.

And a correction, not a Linksys, it's a Cisco (in the end the same thing). UC320. The FXO ports are unused.

Got them sold on the Switches, firewall, and pbx. Looking at 3xCisco 3560X Switch and maybe the SonicWALL NSA 3600. However, never used the NSA 3600, anyone got any reviews on it?

 

[angry_geek]

Agreed. Systems need to be as close to the wall as possible. Since printers would be inside the LAN, they can be at that 3rd hop, and shouldn't be a problem.

And a correction, not a Linksys, it's a Cisco (in the end the same thing). UC320. The FXO ports are unused.

Got them sold on the Switches, firewall, and pbx. Looking at 3xCisco 3560X Switch and maybe the SonicWALL NSA 3600. However, never used the NSA 3600, anyone got any reviews on it?

Dynamite! . . . once set up. I don't know why people say that. I just saw it on dd-wrt forums a minute ago. Of course it's no good til it's set up! I digress. Hell of a unit, good throughout, on board v-lan management. Once in place, I rarely have to touch them again. Be sure to flash new firmware as soon as you get it registered. Did you sell them the utm package?

 

[frederick]

Dynamite! . . . once set up. I don't know why people say that. I just saw it on dd-wrt forums a minute ago. Of course it's no good til it's set up! I digress. Hell of a unit, good throughout, on board v-lan management. Once in place, I rarely have to touch them again. Be sure to flash new firmware as soon as you get it registered. Did you sell them the utm package?

I didn't sell them on units specifically. I told them what they needed, why they needed it, and how if they don't, nothin gonna get any better. The owners looked at me and said "We're increasing your budget...have it all done by the end of next month...tell us when you are going to need us to not come in while you do the upgrades"

So I decided to push the limit, and got them sold on even more services...I might have created a long-term client out of this one...WIN!!!

Back to the main point here on what this is about, hops. How do you handle the LAN to LAN to get to a WAN nets in a single building. Where you have a general office building that leases out to others, but they also provide the internet on their own backbone, but the renter has to use their own switch/router to connect multiple devices? I've been running into these lately, and seems there is little I can do about it as property management is either clueless about how this stuff works, or just doesn't care (or both).

 

[pceinc]

Yeah the TZ series will never support the incoming bandwidth especially if they are running any of the security services such as AV and filtering.
NSA series would be the best option. My advise on a network that size, get two and configure high availability. Where is the cable bonding done? Is there another device external to the Sonicwall or is the Sonicwall configured for LB?

 

[frederick]

Yeah the TZ series will never support the incoming bandwidth especially if they are running any of the security services such as AV and filtering.
NSA series would be the best option. My advise on a network that size, get two and configure high availability. Where is the cable bonding done? Is there another device external to the Sonicwall or is the Sonicwall configured for LB?

The bonding/load balancing is all handled in the modem.