Designing a network for 80+ users

[Guest S Anu]

I need to setup a network for my office which there will be 80+ users but I am unable to find a network switch with that many ports what should I do. I want the best performance. I would also like each user to have a 1 gigabit connection.

[KangUsapEmenq]

You need to be way more specific than "I want the best performance". And you won't find any switch more than 48-ports.

• What's the usage on your office?
• What's the internet speed provided by the ISP?
• Do VLAN would be necessary?
• Is there would be any 'policies' on the network itself? *eg. internet speed limit per user, etc
• Will there would be any wireless network connected?

If the usage are just as simple as 'plug-and-play', two 48-port managed switch with LACP link-aggregation would just the job fine.

[Sir Asvald]

What do you mean by "best performance"?

 

Sorry to be blunt. but what you're asking you don't know what you're looking for.  It is better to get an IT consultant and talk to them and to tell them what you need. Designing a network is no easy task and I will list the reasons:

 

1. You need to sure on what your requirements are, it can get really complicated and messy.
2. Maintaining the equipment, keeping them up to date.
3. Security, as in physical access to the network room. What security measures are you going to take?
4. Ethernet cable to the correct locations, takes a long to time to cut, splice and making sure that they work.
5. Network security, keeping out users from unauthorised access such as VLANs and ACLs.

[Guest S Anu]

2 hours ago, dhannemon13 said:

You need to be way more specific than "I want the best performance". And you won't find any switch more than 48-ports.

• What's the usage on your office?
• What's the internet speed provided by the ISP?
• Do VLAN would be necessary?
• Is there would be any 'policies' on the network itself? *eg. internet speed limit per user, etc
• Will there would be any wireless network connected?

If the usage are just as simple as 'plug-and-play', two 48-port managed switch with LACP link-aggregation would just the job fine.

Sorry for not being quite specific.

Here’s the answers to your questions 

1 mostly to share files

2 gigabit connection from isp

3vlan is not necessary

4 it’s not necessary for speed limits

5 yes bit I have that done with a separate switch already 

 

[KangUsapEmenq]

19 hours ago, Sir Asvald said:

What do you mean by "best performance"?

 

Sorry to be blunt. but what you're asking you don't know what you're looking for.  It is better to get a IT consultant and talk to them and to tell them what you need. Designing a network is no easy task and I will list the reasons:

 

1. You need to sure on what your requirements are, it can get really complicated and messy.
2. Maintaining the equipment, keeping them up to date.
3. Security, as in physical access to the network room. What security measures are you going to take?
4. Ethernet cable to the correct locations, takes a long to time to cut, splice and making sure that they work.
5. Network security, keeping out users from unauthorised access such as VLANs and ACLs.

I totally agree with you, actually. But from OP's answer I actually thought the one he wanted to implement are the one that 'simple' enough to do. Although I'd still hire IT consultant on how good the network is.

 

17 hours ago, S Anu said:

Sorry for not being quite specific.

Here’s the answers to your questions 

1 mostly to share files

2 gigabit connection from isp

3vlan is not necessary

4 it’s not necessary for speed limits

5 yes bit I have that done with a separate switch already 

 

Well, then you can simply get two 48-port managed switch, as I said before, and just link-aggregate them using LACP (probably have to get this feature) just because just one gigabit connection between switches would be a bottleneck, using router in a stick config. I'd go for Ubiquity's EdgeSwitch Lite, or perhaps other brand (yet kind of more expensive, enterprise-grade like Cisco or HP) would be nice.

[LAwLz]

There are no (1U) switches with 80 ports. You're going to need two. 

 

But you have not given us nearly enough info to provide you with an answer. The questions asked above were good but we are still missing a ton of info like:

1) What other equipment is in the network? This is relevant to keep management simple (you want uniformity) and to make sure you can actually connect the new switches in a decent way. You can't cram 80 gigabit ports through a single gigabit port and think it will work well. 

2) How much traffic do you actually expect the computers to send/receive?

3) Between what computers will the traffic flow? In other words, where is the server located where these 80 computers will pull/push data and how much can that handle?

 

You can't really just buy a bunch of switches and plug them in however you want because you might end up with one or more bottlenecks.

Luckily you have only asked for gigabit connections from the switch to the clients and you will have a hard time finding anything but gigabit switches these days (unless you're buying cheap secondhand stuff), but even if we recommend you some different switch models you might not get the expected performance depending on how you plug them in.

[wanderingfool2]

20 hours ago, S Anu said:

Sorry for not being quite specific.

Here’s the answers to your questions 

1 mostly to share files

2 gigabit connection from isp

3vlan is not necessary

4 it’s not necessary for speed limits

5 yes bit I have that done with a separate switch already 

Honestly, if you are planning 80+ employees at once to use your network then it would be recommended to get a network consultant.  Sure, you could probably setup 2 switches and have it "work"...but with 80 people it's to the point that you should be getting professional opinions.

 

e.g. You say vlan's aren't necessary, but vlan's can really help keep things isolated (e.g. file servers on it's own vlan).  If you were to connect everything up plainly, and something like WannaCry comes along the company could have a very bad day.

 

The way I look at it, even if you paid something crazy like $20k in consulting/implementing fees (which you shouldn't), that is less than 1 person's salary for the year.

[Sir Asvald]

On 1/18/2021 at 11:55 AM, S Anu said:

Sorry for not being quite specific.

Here’s the answers to your questions 

1 mostly to share files

2 gigabit connection from isp

3vlan is not necessary

4 it’s not necessary for speed limits

5 yes bit I have that done with a separate switch already 

 

VLANs are NECESSARY. What happens if someone accesses a certain server? if you're not going to implement VLANs, at least set up user permissions.. Users will do stupid things and they will NEVER own up to it. Leaving a network wide open is VERY dangerous, I don't understand why people insist on leaving networks vulnerable..