connecting two networks

  • Thread starter Thread starter brad
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brad

Guys,

I am looking for some broad info. I have somewhat an idea of what I want to
do but any input would be good.

I have two servers and about seventy-five hosts. I am going to use (2) 48
port switches to connect these. I am also going to have a router for the
internet. I want to find out the best way to connect all of this. The
easiest way is to uplink the two switches and then uplink the router to the
switch. I do not want to do this. I want to setup two switches and each
computer on each of those have two different subnets. This way I do not
have traffic from one switch flowing to the other. I wish to have both
servers hanging off of one switch but I don't know the best way to plug all
of this in.

Can somebody please help me with network design?

Brad Wilson
(e-mail address removed)
 
can' t you have both switches connected to the router?
if not what you can do on one of the server install RRAS and use it as a
router
- the server needs to have 2 NIC cards one on each subnet
then you can hook one switch to the router and configure the RRAS on the
server to route between both networks

basically your network will look like this:

router---switch one---- SERVER(RRAS)---- switch two
 
is there a specific end result that u're trying to achieve?
more specific than just the 2 subnet.
 
Brad,

A word of caution. You might want to seek out someone face to face. You are
going to find that asking broad questions of this nature to a bunch of
techies (myself very much included) will get you about 100 different
answers...that will likely all be correct to some degree.

This is similar to asking 10 lawyers a question about handling a legal
matter. They will all have a different answer. Putting all of the answers
will likely cause you to be more confused than when you began.

My .02....

It is probably worht what it cost you!

I hope this helps...

Ron
 
Brad,

Just be careful not to create any loops in your network. If you plug both
switches into the router, and no two devices on the other side of the 2
switches connect another way (via a multi-homed server that routes,
whatever), you should be fine. Otherwise, you might create a loop. Keep in
mind you never want a P.O.S. router to route your ethernet traffic between
switches. Uplinking both switches then plugging the router into either
switch is the best option, in my humble opinion. If you have 100mbps
switches you will not notice any difference unless you have a huge outbound
pipe and tons of outbound traffic ... most offices don't. Even still, any
other solution would probably be on the same level of efficiency.

I've chased down several IPX/SPX loops in Netware that stupid Network
Administrators created by not knowing what they were doing. This scenario
can really bog down any network. Draw it on a piece of paper if all else
fails.

clint
 
did you try VLAN by configuring the swithces ? this may help you.

Sait Ozceviz
MCSE, MCSA, AIXP
 
The easiest way to do this is as you say, uplink the two switches and uplink
the router, one subnet. Place one server on one switch, the other server on
the other switch. If you are running 100Mb nics, and 100Mb switches, your
traffic is going to be negligible. A VLAN will work, but if your client
computers make frequent calls to the servers (e-mail server, file/print
server etc...) you're still going to have traffic back-and-forth between the
switches. This means that you can have all traffic see each other, and have
one default gateway (the internet router). Doing this any other way means
that you sacrifice simplicity and diagnostic ability. The simplicity in this
would be that you would have the following:

10.0.0.1 (router - inside interface) - *?*?*?*? outside i/f
10.0.0.2 (switch 1)
10.0.0.3 (switch 2)
10.0.0.4 (server 1) - server 1 resides on switch 1
10.0.0.5 (server 2) - server 2 resides on switch 2
10.0.0.50-200 - all clients
10.0.0.201-254 - use for bootp/dhcp

Your server and clients would have the following IP config:

10.0.0.?
subnet 255.255.255.0
default gateway: 10.0.0.1

To speed the network up, build a static host table and place on each
machine, this would eliminate wins and wins queries. Also, if you know your
users, you can put both the servers on one switch, and add all the power
users to that switch as well, the remaining users can go on the second
switch.


VLAN's work best when you have departmental servers - i.e. the accounting
department has its own file/print server and all are on VLAN1. The e-mail
server is in VLAN2. All traffic for the accounting department remains in
VLAN1, except when a call is made to the e-mail server, at this point only
the client requesting the call is passed from VLAN1 to VLAN2. On networks
that host Exchange or similar servers, calls are made too frequently to gain
any benefits. If you do decide to use a VLAN, remember, you can have a VLAN
that spans two switches (on similar switches - 3Com for e.g).

Subnetting does the same thing except you would need to have a router to
join the two subnets (and you can't use the one you want to use for the
internet).


Regards,
 
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