network mess and a solution request.

[TechSloth]

Hi all,

 

im looking to pick your brains to find a solution for this rats nest of a corner that my company has. i will attatch the diagram i managed to figure out and see if there is any solution. yeah i know it has a fax line, this is japan, for some reason they still use and love fax... so it kind of complicates things i think while looking for a solution.

 

please forgive the simplicity and the japanese, im not the only one that has to read it.

 

so it goes internet > Router 1 & fax line > Router 2 & Phone line > Switch 1 > WAP & Switch 2 > 4 Computers & Printer.

 

there is also a chonky ancient white box with NTT written on it. we dont know if its part of the fax/phone lines or a UPS or something else. Not even the IT Support that we use has a scooby what it is. hahaha they were sooo confused by the set up it was hilarious.

 

we are looking to refresh with a NAS and trying to condense this rats nest to some sort of resemblance of order and much simpler. Maybe 1 Switch with everything connected to that and a NAS. but again the issue i think will cause a headache is the FAX and Phone lines.

 

the computers are 3 desktops soon to be 4 and 2 ancient laptops. the desktops dont have wireless capability but could be upgraded, damn the warranty.

 

thanks all.

[BecauseRussia]

So here are just some questions:

 

1. You have two routers, why? What purpose does having two routers solve? Is it a limitation of ports or connection types?

 

2. You have two switches, normally you have more switches because you need more ports or you need the switch in a physically different location. So, if you don't need the extra ports then perhaps you don't need the other switch. I would confirm if both are capable of PoE.

 

 

[TechSloth]

9 minutes ago, BecauseRussia said:

So here are just some questions:

 

1. You have two routers, why? What purpose does having two routers solve? Is it a limitation of ports or connection types?

 

2. You have two switches, normally you have more switches because you need more ports or you need the switch in a physically different location. So, if you don't need the extra ports then perhaps you don't need the other switch. I would confirm if both are capable of PoE.

 

 

to answer your questions,.

 

2 routers because one has the fax line one has the phone line and if you consolidate them and remove one teh phone and fax stops working. i already tried that and it cause panic among some of the older staff.

 

as for the switches its simply a location thing from what we can tell. when it was all installed (14/15yrs ago from what im told) they ran 2 ethernet cables across the room into a switch whith then has the computers and printer in it. port availability arent an issue

[TheRandomness]

-Thread moved to Networking.

[mariushm]

Well, you could probably remove Switch 1 right away.

Connect router 2 to switch 2, then have a cable from switch 2 to wan ... may mean extra cable but you remove one powered device from equation. 

make sure the wan is not powered through poe or if it does, your  switch 2 should have poe. 

 

The fax and phone line ... could be a IP conflict or something like that. Maybe router1 gets and assigns IPs from some private class, and router2 from another class.

Are the fax and phone actual IP / Ethernet devices or do they maybe use ADSL / DSL / VDSL / some kind of phone line ? Maybe one of the routers can do one of those phone line inputs and that's why it's needed.

The NTT box ... don't you need a phone line or two for the fax and phone?  Maybe that's what it is.   Or maybe it's a box that converts fiber/coax/vdsl  from your ISP to regular ethernet?

 

Your phones could be Voice over IP but faxes... not sure how they work in Japan.

 

4 hours ago, TechSloth said:

 

 

so it goes internet > Router 1 & fax line > Router 2 & Phone line > Switch 1 > WAP & Switch 2 > 4 Computers & Printer.

 

there is also a chonky ancient white box with NTT written on it. we dont know if its part of the fax/phone lines or a UPS or something else. Not even the IT Support that we use has a scooby what it is. hahaha they were sooo confused by the set up it was hilarious.

 

we are looking to refresh with a NAS and trying to condense this rats nest to some sort of resemblance of order and much simpler. Maybe 1 Switch with everything connected to that and a NAS. but again the issue i think will cause a headache is the FAX and Phone lines.

 

the computers are 3 desktops soon to be 4 and 2 ancient laptops. the desktops dont have wireless capability but could be upgraded, damn the warranty.

 

thanks all.