I was thinking about a couple of 2950 48p catalyst switches. Which router would you suggest for routing between these VLANs ? the router would also be the gateway towards the firewall and out to the Internet.
One more thing: is there any special requirement to look for in the switches and router, should we decide in the future to use VoIP with an IP PBX ?
You could look at 3560 series switches which can do routing, instead of
2950's and a router. Less equipment, but most likely much more expensive.
However, you can buy 3560 in PoE models, which is something you'd generally be after if you're doing VoIP, but is not necessary because all IP phones can be used with a power brick. Some come with them (like Polycom SoundPoint IP phones) and some you pay extra (Like Cisco IP phones, at about $25 per brick). You need to do a cost analyis and see if the cost of power bricks (if you have to pay for them) is worth the savings on the switch). Also, the 3560's and run an enhanced image and provide QoS, which is something you want for a VoIP setup.
Anyways, for a router to use, it really depends on what you need to do. You could use something as basic as the 800 series, or move to the 1800 and 2800 series. The 1800 series routers are not designed of voice applications as they cannot support DSPs. If there was an 800 series that supported DSPs, it wouldn't be near enough for your application, so you are probably looking at a 2801 at a minimum.
Your basic requirements for a switch/router when you want to use voice should be:
-Does the switch support VLAN tagging
-Does the switch support QoS
-Does the switch support Inline Power
-Does the router support QoS
-Does the router support voice (voice software, DSPs, voice modules to hook in FXO/FXS, PRI, T1/E1, etc)
cheapest 48p 10/100 3560 is $6500 list, but you are getting a more or less wirespeed router built in.
is you want 10/100/1000 then you can get that as a 3560, but not a 2950
Agreed
but PoE can be cheaper than arranging all the extra power feeds for the phones, and if you have a UPS in the wiring closet covering the switches and associated Voip servers then the phones work during a mains outage - some places that is important.
you can do QoS on 2950s (there are 2 levels of QoS, with the better version limited to the EI, more expensive flavor of switch, and no upgrade path)
The implied network design from the VLAN structure is that all traffic between users and servers will cross between VLANs - in turn that means you need a fast router - and the only cheap fast IP routers are layer 3 switches like the 3560s....
so the router only needs Ethernet interfaces.
However, the choice really depends on the required performance and you havent given much info about that.
power over ethernet - anything else you would add as part of the VoIP / IP telephony deployment.
Thank you very much for the suggestion. I never used a switch with routing; how does the configuration differ from the traditional VLAN + external router ? do you apply an IP and subnet to each VLAN and then just turn on routing on the switch ? can you apply ACLs on the traffic as you'd do on a classic router ?
I agree.
I would just need to route traffic between the VLANs. This would be standard office traffic (meaning some light file management and intranet stuff on an internal web site) plus telephone calls going towards the IP-PBX.
The switch configures exactly the same way in terms of the VLANs but you would define an interface IP for each VLAN. On a switch like this, you can take any interface and turn it into a routed port with the commands "no switchport", essentially making a 24 or 48 port router. You enable "ip routing" on the switch itself, and then it can take a variety of ip commands like a router would.
For example, I do the following in many small offices:
3560 PoE switch (used 3550 PoE's in 1) with ip routing enabled. Every VLAN has it's own interface IP. All my devices default gateway is the VLAN int ip on the switch. The switch has a defuult route to the edge device (be it PIX firewall or small router for T1).
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