100 People Network

[ChemistLoli]

Hi everyone! I'm researching on my project and I need help cause I have no idea what I'm doing.
Apparently I need to create a network setup for around 90 people separated into 5 units in a building to work and share files and also have internet for everyone so roughly I have these questions:

Approximately how many switches do I need?

Is a single router/modem provided by the ISP sufficient?

How many types of server that I need? (Things such as file server, dns server, dhcp etc.)

Which network protocols do we use?

 

Advance thanks!

[Sir Asvald]

4 minutes ago, ChemistLoli said:

Hi everyone! I'm researching on my project and I need help cause I have no idea what I'm doing.
Apparently I need to create a network setup for around 90 people separated into 5 units in a building to work and share files and also have internet for everyone so roughly I have these questions:

Approximately how many switches do I need?

Is a single router/modem provided by the ISP sufficient?

How many types of server that I need? (Things such as file server, dns server, dhcp etc.)

Which network protocols do we use?

 

Advance thanks!

Welcome to the forum!  

 

What type of "work" do they do? 

[ChemistLoli]

Just now, Abdul201588 said:

Welcome to the forum!  

 

What type of "work" do they do? 

They do interior design services

[Sir Asvald]

Just now, ChemistLoli said:

They do interior design services

Okay, so what software do they use? out of the 100 people, who does the designs?

[ChemistLoli]

1 minute ago, Abdul201588 said:

Okay, so what software do they use? out of the 100 people, who does the designs?

My project did not specify but most likely photoshop

[Sir Asvald]

7 minutes ago, ChemistLoli said:

My project did not specify but most likely photoshop

Okay, that is something I need to know. Are they using MAC or PC? In the 5 units, who works there besides the designers? 

[ChemistLoli]

Just now, Abdul201588 said:

Okay, that is something I need to know. Are they using MAC or PC? In the 5 buildings who else works there besides the designers?

They are working in a single building but separated into 5 units. Beside designers there would be 15 admin staffs, 2 IT staffs and 73 designers to total 90. They will be using PC

[Sir Asvald]

1 minute ago, ChemistLoli said:

They are working in a single building but separated into 5 units. Beside designers there would be 15 admin staffs, 2 IT staffs and 73 designers to total 90. They will be using PC

Okay. Now we are getting somewhere.  What is the budget for the project? How many computers will be needed? Do all the staff members need access to the servers? Do they need to work from outside the office? What about backup for the servers?

 

 

 

 

[ChemistLoli]

1 minute ago, Abdul201588 said:

Okay. Now we are getting somewhere.  What is the budget for the project? How many computers will be needed? Do all the staff members need access to the servers? Do they need to work from outside the office? What about backup for the servers?

 

 

 

 

We don't really have a budget, all 73 designers would a pc and only 5 would need to access files outside the office. The backup haven't been implemented yet

[Pixel5]

for the networking its pretty straight forward you can very commonly get switches with 48 ports so two of these would get you going for now.

the router from the ISP is generally enough if all you want is internet but how fast this all will be depends on your connection speed.

 

for file storage you can build a storage server by yourself if needed or just get a ready made Synology NAS which would also be no problem for this number of users, you should just make sure to get one with 10Gbit ports and also a switch that has a port for this.

 

its not really much that you need its just expensive.

[Pixel5]

2 minutes ago, ChemistLoli said:

We don't really have a budget, all 73 designers would a pc and only 5 would need to access files outside the office. The backup haven't been implemented yet

how can a company do something like this without defining a budget and how do you have so much IT staff that is not taking care of this?

 

this whole project is easily going to cost a few thousand dollars just in device you need to purchase depending on how much storage you need.

[ChemistLoli]

1 minute ago, Pixel5 said:

how can a company do something like this without defining a budget and how do you have so much IT staff that is not taking care of this?

 

this whole project is easily going to cost a few thousand dollars just in device you need to purchase depending on how much storage you need.

Well this is a assignment from my school, guess this scenario is fictitious

Cause the assignment did not specify so doing research is kinda tough 

[Pixel5]

16 minutes ago, ChemistLoli said:

Well this is a assignment from my school, guess this scenario is fictitious

Cause the assignment did not specify so doing research is kinda tough 

ah so its not actually any real project its just a "tell us how you would do this" kind of thing.

 

the question is what do they expect? a detailed list of components and how you want to set it up or what is the exact goal?

[ChemistLoli]

all in all is wanting me to recommend network topology, protocols, hardware, software, future expansion plans and any other additional features beneficial such as 

• File and Print services
• Internet access
• Remote access to office network
• Security
• Data Backup
• Network Scalability
• High Availability/Fault tolerance

I mean for now I need to know what do I need really

[Pixel5]

to be honest if thats all its relatively easy, each of the 5 units gets an 48 port switch with 1gbit ports for the users and 10gbit ports for a central connection.

 

all 10gbit connections come together in one switch that only needs 10gbit ports, this switch connects to a Synology NAS which offers everything you listed except for internet access.

 

for high availability you just get another Synology they have failover build in.

 

thats all you need for a small setup like this.

[ChemistLoli]

6 minutes ago, Pixel5 said:

to be honest if thats all its relatively easy, each of the 5 units gets an 48 port switch with 1gbit ports for the users and 10gbit ports for a central connection.

 

all 10gbit connections come together in one switch that only needs 10gbit ports, this switch connects to a Synology NAS which offers everything you listed except for internet access.

 

for high availability you just get another Synology they have failover build in.

 

thats all you need for a small setup like this.

alright I'll research further thank you so much!

and Abdul201588 too  

[LAwLz]

3 hours ago, ChemistLoli said:

Approximately how many switches do I need?

At least one for each building. So 5 minimum.

It kind of depends on how spread out the people are in each building, but a 24 port or 48 port switch in each building should be fine.

Depending on how the buildings are located and what structure you want in the network, you might need a distribution switch too, making it 6 in total.

 

3 hours ago, ChemistLoli said:

Is a single router/modem provided by the ISP sufficient?

It really depends on which router your ISP provides you with, what the network will be used for, and what features are necessary.

If you get a home router and you want to do things like VLAN separation then no, it will not be enough.

But if the network design is "flat", with little to no rules or separation between users, then it might just fine.

 

Enterprise customers sometimes lease pretty good routers from ISPs, but they have no control over them. In cases like that you might need the ISP router at the boarder, and then your own router or L3 switch inside the network.

 

3 hours ago, ChemistLoli said:

How many types of server that I need? (Things such as file server, dns server, dhcp etc.)

Depends on how much redundancy is needed and what functionality the company needs.

A small Synology NAS might be fine. It can do some neat stuff for a small company.

The step up from that would be a Windows server running AD.

The next step up would be to have two Windows servers for redundancy and distribute workload.

 

Here are the typical services I would recommend:

AD

DNS

DHCP

File server

Mail server

 

Then you could add stuff like:

Microsoft SCCM.

Centralized anti-virus console.

Cisco Prime Infrastructure or other network monitoring (like Nagios or OP5).

Syslog server

Ticket system like Microsoft scsm.

Print server

[beersykins]

What kind of stuff have you been going over in class?  I'd just leverage that.

 

But as per others user quantity is pretty irrelevant since in this case you can just add more switches/ports.  There are a few more advanced designs you could do like layer 3 on the access edge leveraging a dynamic protocol or something, but that might be out of scope of what you're learning.

 

It sounds like they're just looking for something like collapsed-core/distribution<->access layer type of connectivity and what services you would need to reach various resources (DHCP, maybe NAT for the Internet, etc).  You'll probably get the most points for a solid IP allocation scheme, VLAN scheme, trunking the VLANs correctly and being able to route between networks.

 

If you wanted to scale up complexity you can add pretty much anything you know about, firewall, dynamic routing protocols, IPv6, etc, although 'more complex' is not necessarily 'better'.  The best networks are ones that are secure, easy to manage and exceed the requirements for what you're building against for performance and flexibility.

[AngryBeaver]

10 hours ago, ChemistLoli said:

Well this is a assignment from my school, guess this scenario is fictitious

Cause the assignment did not specify so doing research is kinda tough 

Ok this warrants a response.

 

If this is a school project, then the LAST thing you should be doing is coming here. If you are asking us for the answers then you are missing the entire point of the project, which is PERSONAL GROWTH. You will need to get out and do your own research and homework on this.

 

The worst thing any of us can do is give you the answers, because then you will progress through the class and potentially get to your capstone or even graduate and enter the workforce without having this knowledge, which undervalues the degree to everyone else.

 

So don't come here trying to take a shortcut. Do the work yourself, if you are taking this as a class then you have all the resources you need.