Your opinion on this network set up

[nesrinamb]

Just got a new client who says they want new firewalls installed. They already have the new firewalls and switches and they actually sent me this diagram

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5WsdVCOHF-paFE1SXo2MkEtUkk/edit?usp=sharing

The diagram was created by their old tech.

Is it just me or does this need redoing. They got way to many firewalls for no reason and way to many switches.

Some explanation: the blue boxes at the top are internet lines. 4 dsl and one t1. One dsl line is just supposed to be a wireless access point. Where it says dialer those are the the phones. Best part of all is that they want a network printer setup for all of of them.

I'm gonna go take a look at the switches tomorrow but it seems like they got way to many network devices. One good firewall and a good system to set up a vlan between dialer, exec, and sales would seem the easier way to go. Well actually the voip could be on its own network cuz they got the t1 just for that.

Please let me here some opinions.

 

[seedubya]

At first glance it certainly looks messy. How many clients? What's the internal addressing structure?

 

[Geek007]

Does look like a bit of a messy diagram.

This might sound obvious, but if it was me, I'd want to find out EXACTLY what everything is being used for. I guess really a bit of an IT audit.
First thing I'm thinking of is why have they got 4 dsl lines? (but an audit would discover this)
Looks like they've got a dsl line for each company 'function' to me.

 

[nesrinamb]

20 clients, no server, 192 setup

 

[nesrinamb]

Conducting an audit is a great idea as for the DSL lines each max out at 2 down, I will see if they can get fiber in the area considering they are in a fairly new building.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

A quick glance...yes looks complicated and I have a lot of "why"s...

But...hard to really answer, not knowing the logic of why it's been setup that way, or what the clients needs are.

20x computers in a workgroup...guessing he wants that workgroup separate/segmented from each other. One could still do this with a single switch, managed, vlans, and a single router with dual WAN for failover.

 

[nesrinamb]

OK so talk about miss communication. I finally took a look at everything and this is what I got. (did not see server closet, got a better idea of everything else)

60 employes
48 voip phones
13 executives with their own phones and computers
No servers

This is what they want setup.

1 firewall has two wan connections it has 2 24 port switches which end up being the phones.

The other firewall with 2 wan connections goes to two more switches which end up being 48 computers.

Then they want the remaining firewalls for the 13 executives. One for the phones with its own wans and the other for the computers.

Honestly when I first looked at the network it seemed kinda crazy but now I understand why they have 4 dsl lines and a t1.

The network set up seems to be decent. Only issue I would see is having to set up printers across the networks.

Now all I have to do is see if everything is labeled. I hope I don't have to use a probe to try to figure out which ones are phones and which ones are computers.

 

[tankman1989]

I would definitely look into the availability of something to replace the T1. Is the T1 for all 60 employees phone system? Is it 60 employees at one time or is this a 24/7 business? I would think that a dedicated business cable line or fiber might be as reliable and probably offer more bandwidth if they wanted to add video to the VoIP setup.

 

[nesrinamb]

The t1 is just for the phones and their will be a secondary internet connection with it. 48 phones with such small bandwidth will be an issue.


It's not a 24/7 business but yes I will be talking to them about adding a fiber line so everything can be consolidated to one network. As well as have the phones on their own vlan.

I checked online with the governments broadband map and this is what I got for the area as for available connections. Unfortunately the speeds are not that great and the ones that are decent cost a pretty penny.

Windstream Corporation
1 Gbps+

Time Warner Cable Inc.
50 - 100 Mbps

Platinum Equity, LLC
10 - 25 Mbps

AT&T Inc.
10 - 25 Mbps

T-Mobile
10 - 25 Mbps