I need help with a network infrastructure upgrade project, and I'd like to get some serious recommendations.
Lets say a company is looking to buy all new equipment, except for internal cabling, and they are looking to do three main things:
1. Implement a new corporate infrastructure
2. Implement a new WAN to cover remote offices, that could be all the way across the country
3. Implement secure remote solutions for agents in the field
The Company has not bought into any specific infrastructure system as of yet. Their current accounting system is an AS400 with serial links locally and dial in for remote sites. They are in the process of upgrading their accounting system to a SAP based system utilizing a web front end, so the new equipment should support SAP and AS400. In the future they will be looking to upgrade to a VOIP phone system, so implemented equipment must support VOIP, but it won't be installed now.
The campus has 5 floors with 600 data drops per floor, each floor is about 50 meters by 150 meters, and their is a server room dedicated to equipment on the 3rd floor. Each floor has 2 closets with approximately a 50/50 split for the data drops per floor. All drops must be active. Remotely their are 15 offices with under 5 people, 6 offices with under 50 but over 5, 2 offices with over 50 but under 100 and 2 regional headquarters with approximately 300 people each. At peak time they anticipate about 200-300 offsite remote users.
All sites must be able to get to the SAP system securely and it must have redundancy. They also want to implement a central email system, and central network services, so all links to the remote offices must support such services.
None of the existing infrastructure is useable for this project, as the IBM systems used are end of service and no longer supported.
I'm trying to get recommendations for what vendor to go with, like Cisco, and if anyonw knows what specific parts would work best that would be great. Non certified system installs won't be acceptable, and all systems in data closests must be mountable, or if its wireless it must be placed above the dropped ceiling and out of site. Servers, PBXs, and software arent important at this point, just the types of connections (T1?) and types of routers and switches would be best to implement for this entire design.
Any help and advice is greatly, greatly appreciated.
