student question...need some help

[guitarwolf]

hi,

i'm doing my 1st term in a 2 year IT course.

i'm dong a project that involves setting up a network in a 2 floor warehouse.

i have my layout designed , but now i need to choose the router and switches.

the network backbone is fibre optic.

so this will run into the router and then i will be using 1GBs Cat6 to connect to the 3 switches. from there it will be 100MBs Cat5 to the workstations.

my problem is finding the correct router and switches to use.

i was considering the 2821 router, but i'm not sure if it has a connection for fibre optic.

i'm considering the 2960 series switches.

any thoughts or suggestions?

thanks!

[amit-singh]

Hi fabian,

2821 router doesnot have fiber port on it but you can use a 1 port GBIC HWIC to have a fiber port on it.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps5854/products_data_sheet0900aecd8016be8d.html

3825 and 3845 routers have a Fiber SFP port on them and you can use a wide variety of GBICS avaiable to connect.

2960 switch is the best for the user connectivity at access layer.These switch have 2 dual porpose ports on them. i.e 2 fiber SFP port and 2 10/100/1000 copper port with 1 port active at a time only.

Let me know if you more questions on it and I will clear your doubts.

-amit singh

[guitarwolf]

so, if i have only one fibre optic connection coming into the router, would the 3825 be fine?

there would then be three 1GBs Cat6 connections leaving the router and connecting to three 2960 switches.

is this what you are saying would be a workable setup?

i appreciate your input.

thanks!

[ankbhasi]

Hi Fabian,

I thaught to suggest you this yesterday but forgot. Anyways as I mentioned yesterday routers always lack port density and also cost per port is more compared to switchports.

Getting 3 fiber port on router will be very costly and that was the reason suggested you to have main switch connected to router and then connect all switches to this main switch.

2821 router comes with two integrated 10/100/1000 ethernet ports not fiber interface so you may not get 3 10/100/100 ports even to connect to your 3 switches via 1 GIG link. So either you can integrate this router with some etherswitch module which has max 1 gig port so in all you will get 3 gig ports.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps5854/products_data_sheet0900aecd8028d15f.html

Your switch choice of 2960 is fine and will work well with your requirement.

HTH

Ankur

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