Please tell me what network specifications I'm overlooking

JT2014

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I'm a novice when it comes to network construction, yet I'm faced with the challenge of putting together my small business office. I'm hoping I can give a brief rundown of what I'm planning and would extremely appreciate any feedback of what I'm missing, what would be better, or what may not work.

We have 7 employees with 7 offices and a conference room. We also have a small cubicle area that can house 10 employees and we plan to move into that over the next few years. We want to go VoIP and link it with a TAPI compliant server which will also store our extensive client database. I will need a firewall that doubles as a router with prioritization capability. I'm not sure how many switches I will need or if I will need a dedicated IP for the telephony system. We want 90 down 10 up from our cable provider however I'm concerned about the phone clarity as dropping phone calls cannot be an option. Any guidance you may provide would be amazing. Thanks in advance!
 
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Well working backwards from what you stated is that VOIP performance is critical. To get this you need a router and switch that have QOS (quality of service ) capability. What this will allow is that you prioritize your VOIP traffic over all else. Latency is the key here. You want it as low as possible. So lets start with switches. Switches come in a variety of types. To help you understand them here is a link to an intro to switch types that will help you understand what I am going to suggest. http://www.avsforum.com/forum/39-networking-media-servers-content-streaming/1624586-network-switch-types-there-differences.html

You want a managed switch and for your situation a "Plus or Smart Switch " will be fine (refer to the...

bobsilver

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Well working backwards from what you stated is that VOIP performance is critical. To get this you need a router and switch that have QOS (quality of service ) capability. What this will allow is that you prioritize your VOIP traffic over all else. Latency is the key here. You want it as low as possible. So lets start with switches. Switches come in a variety of types. To help you understand them here is a link to an intro to switch types that will help you understand what I am going to suggest. http://www.avsforum.com/forum/39-networking-media-servers-content-streaming/1624586-network-switch-types-there-differences.html

You want a managed switch and for your situation a "Plus or Smart Switch " will be fine (refer to the article for differences). This will allow you to tell the network to prioritize your VOIP traffic. Given your size you will want to put in a 24 port switch. From that switch you would wire each of your offices and cubicle spaces with an cat5e or 6 cable. There you would connect your VOIP phones and computers. If you need more capacity you can add another switch when required. The QOS will be tied to the data type (VOIP) and can also be tied to MAC addresses or ports. A lot of control here.

The router will maintain your firewall as well as much of your security. Although if you wish to create walled networks through the switch you can create Vlan's (Virtual Lan) that can be isolated. This also works for isolating printers to groups and such. Most routers today are wireless too. You didn't mention that as a requirement. But the sweet spot and value points are in wireless routers. Get a top line router like a Netgear R7000. In addition to wireless they top line routers also have much better CPU performance that will help keep things moving along. Plus they are feature rich in many other areas like printer sharing, back ups and such.

Routers also have QOS capability. You would configure the QOS in the router for data type (VOIP). You would configure the switches to MAC addresses or ports.

Another option that is more complex is to run your VOIP on a dedicated network from that of your data. You would in essence duplicate the switch and cabling to each location. Generally that should be needed. But if you are wiring its cheap and easy to double up on cable when you are doing it. This way you would have 1 switch dedicated to VOIP and the other for data. The router QOS would be configured accordingly.

Given you fast speeds from your cable provider you shouldn't experience issues. With managed switches and routers you will have the control needed should tweaking be required.

Here are a couple links to check out.

Netgear Switches http://cl.netgear.com/business/products/switches/prosafe-plus-switches/default.aspx

Netgear R7000 http://cl.netgear.com/home/products/wirelessrouters/ultimate-performance/R7000.aspx#


Hope this helped.

Bob Silver
NETGEAR Networking Consultant
 
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JT2014

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Thank You Bob! I appreciate your quick response and more importantly the thorough answer.