Friday, January 26, 2018

Best way to design/configure this network?

This isn't a homework question, I feel that I need to state that from the start because it certainly reads like one.

I would also like to state that I walked into this network, many years ago, and as the network grew it was not a possibility to make the necessary changes. I'm not saying it will always be like that, but many decisions were made by electrical contractors as this site never had primary IT support. I have no problem admitting that, even though the above is true, I'm still a bit green in networking, which is why I am making this post.

Without getting into complex design talk about the current setup, I'll start with a few obvious facts about this network (for this theoretical example)

10.10.100.0 /24- IP Camera Network 10.10.105.0 /24- Printer Network 10.10.110.0 /24- LAN Network 192.168.100.0 /24- Server Network 

Here is the question...

What is the best way to wire up 6 remote buildings (all on the same plot of land all connected with at least 6 strands of fiber) while having each network device/network live in their respective buildings. Meaning, each building has 2 IP cameras that need to live on 10.10.100.0 network, each building has 2 printers that need to live on 10.10.105.0, etc.... 

Today, I have trunk links from each building (all are home runs to the main office) and each trunk link carries all the VLANs over the trunk link. This works, but I feel that it isn't the best solution. For example, a broadcast storm on the LAN network in building 5 will cause issues in the remaining buildings due to being on the same broadcast network.

This isn't an excuse, but there were some fiber links that were not done by me and were already in place when I started working here. I feel that a better design would be each building having their own router with static routes on the routers or some type of routing protocol, but I can't get further than that. I think it would be easier, for me, if the respective IP's/networks didn't have to all exist in each building.

Hopefully that is enough information to try to explain the question I'm asking.



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