local area network design

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You need to find out how many users. How much data traffic the users produce.

Ethernet 100mbit CAT5 UTP has a maximum length of 100 meters.

I would not call it a local area network. An area 5 km in radius will cover most of Copenhagen.

Rune

Metro area network.

Problem is most of us learn these skills via some mentoring.

It's a bit hard to tell the OP where to go for assistance,m since he is unclear as to exactly what level his existing knowledge is.

But, for starters, I can tell him what *I* use, and works for me:

I have several sites in about the same radius you do. One site is headquarters, so most traffic flkows to/from there. I have a central core swicth which is an HP 9304 (which is a rebranded Foundry FastIron) connected to the remote sites using 1000Base-LX single mode fiber links (these should work for up to 10km).

The remote sites use a variety of layer 3 gigabit swicthes - but mostly HP 3400cl's.

We leased dark fiber from a local provider that specializes in such.

There are some redundant links between the remote sites to allow failover if one site loses it's link to HQ. Logically, each site is it's own network, and all traffic between sites is routed rather than bridged. Spanning tree turned out to be to slow to fail over if a link goes down, so we use OSPF as my rooting protocol because I have found that it fails over rather quickly - routes reconverge on our net fast enough that it can reroute VOIP calls without dropping them.(things reconverge in about 1 second or so)

First step, sine we are tlaking about > 100m distances, would be to find a source of fiber - either managed or dark. What is available will largely dictate the design and layout of your network.

First you need to define the problem. For example how many locations, how many users, how much traffic volume do you expect? Is this all on property controlled by the owner of the network or will cabling have to cross public property? If the latter do you have or can you at reasonable cost obtain rights-of-way? What reliability level is required. What type of traffic do you expect (i.e. will it mostly be voice, data, video, etc). Is there any existing infrastructure to which it must be tied?