Hi folks,
So my question is in a not-dissimilar vein to this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/networking/comments/adm1za/eli5_whats_the_point_of_24_or_48_port_gigabit/
Our office has a primary server room, where our network stack is located, and a smaller comms room. There's 12 fibre ports between them, but otherwise the rooms are independent (power, AC, UPS).
For whatever reason, when the office was wired with ethernet (built in the 90s but had a demanding gaming company in there before us, everything's Cat6), all the ceiling ports, and by extension all the wifi APs, were run back to the comms room. This is in contrast to the floor ports, where the half of the floor closest to it goes back to the server room, creating a neat physical divide. We're currently in the half that is wired to the comms room, but our office renovation is nearing completion, so we'll soon be moving into the other half. Up until now, the setup has been okay - our LAN is Ubiquiti, and is arranged like so:
| Server Room | Comms Room |
|---|---|
| UniFi USG-4-PRO Router | 2x US-48-500W 48-port 1Gb switches |
| 2x US-XG-16 12-port 10Gb core fibre switches | 10x UAC-PRO wifi access points |
| 1x US-48-500W 48-port 1Gb switch | 6x IP cameras |
| Servers | Security system + misc systems, totalling 4 extra ports |
| 2x IP cameras |
The 2 switches in the comms room are connected back to the core switches with multimode fibre (I know, I know...) at 10Gb. Moving ends means I'm going to need to relocate them to the server room to supply the floor ports. I therefore need something in the comms room to power the wifi APs. There are several reasons I don't want to use the existing 48-port switches for this:
- We need the extra ports in the server room and they're wasted in the comms room
- One switch powering all 10 Wifi APs is a single point of failure
- We are intending to sublet that half of the office and allow the client to fit their own network hardware (should they choose) so I want minimal free ports in there to tempt them (I know I can disable them, but again it's a waste of a 48-port switch)
We have plenty of wireless clients, all on 11ac. The maximum potential bandwidth is 1,300Mbps. I read the points in earlier linked post about overestimating the required bandwidth, but we shift a lot of data between machines (software development). Our internet connection is 1Gb. Since we have the 10Gb core, I think if I were to split 5 APs to a switch (like the current arrangement), I would prefer the uplink was as fast as possible. Just seems logical that the uplink should be much faster than all the edge links, right? We're also bringing a lot of high-performance development machines in-house so I want the links to these to be as fast as possible.
I've looked at Ubiquiti's range, but I'm disappointed. Only the 48-port switches have SFP+ uplinks. Everything else has plain 1Gb SFP. Buying more 48-port switches would be a waste, seeing as how we need no more than 14 ports total, and I want to split them between switches for redundancy.
I was left a pair of brand-new Juniper EX2200-Cs by the previous company (score, right?). I'm using one on my temporary desk, since I have multiple devices but only one floor port, so the switch gives me PoE and correct VLANs. These could quite happily be used to run the IP cameras, since the cameras are only 100Mb and the EX2200 only has a 1Gb uplink. Since I've been tinkering with the Junipers and have one working correctly, I thought about adding another couple. The next model up, the EX2300-C, has the specs I'm thinking - 12 1Gb PoE edge ports, 2 10Gb SFP+ uplink ports, plenty to run the APs with leftover ports for the security systems, and send the traffic back to the core at maximum speed. I would split the APs between them so that one failure should keep half the wifi up. Much as I would have preferred to keep the entire LAN UBNT, needs must.
Does my plan make sense? If not, have I overlooked something, overspec'd something or got it just plain wrong? My experience with professional network equipment is mostly self-taught, although I did set up the UBNT kit considerably better than our MSP 'experts', who locked themselves out of the UniFi controller no less than 3 times in 2 days...
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