A noob humdinger

[Shez]

Hey all -

I'm throwing this one out to you networking Gods, in the hope that the solution is far simpler than I imagined.

The scenario is that I work at a new building, which has been hardwired with 48 data ports. We currently only have internet being piped to 6 of those ports via PoE in order to run our VOIP phones. The additional 42 ports don't need to be PoE, as we only need them to get the interwebs and not be hooked up to phones.

Currently we have a switch (? I think that's what you call it) that has 4 phone lines as input and 6 PoE ethernet cables as output. The 6 ethernet cables are jacked into our huge 48 port board that connects to all the wall outlets scattered through the building.

What I (think) need is a switch that has 6 PoE jacks, at least 42 ethernet jacks AND for it to accept 4 phone lines as the input. Our current system is a 'Cisco Series 500' (nothing more specific than that).

Does such a solution exist as an all-in-one box? Would another solution make more sense?

Any and all help would be hugely helpful! Thanks!

 

[gtvr]

No need for an all in one. POE switches are much more expensive per port than standard switches, and many also don't support gigabit.

Who is your ISP, is it DSL or something else? The 4 phone lines don't provide your internet, do they? Are they just POTS (plain old telephone, analog) lines?

In theory, your network could look something like this:
Internet connection (cable, dsl, t1, whatever it is) connects to a router.
Router connects to WAN port of a firewall.
48 port gigabit ethernet switch connects to LAN port of your firewall.

Run network patch cables from ports on the 48 port switch, to patch panel, which distributes your connections throughout the building.

Plug the Cisco 500 into 1 port on the gigabit ethernet. Either the ports will auto-MDX (auto recognize that they are switch-switch) or there may be a port described as used for that purpose. On this page http://www.1st-computer-networks.co.uk/CISCO-500G-12C.php you can see some of the ports off to the right.

If this isn't workable, or you have more questions, post up in a little more detail what you have.

 

[Shez]

Thanks for the response gtvr.

You're right, I apparently fail at tracing wires. We have DSL service. One wire comes into the building and jacks into a 'Verizon Business Box'. From the 'box' one wire goes down to become the 4 phone lines and another goes into a Total Access 624 box (the router?). From there the Total Access box goes into the Cisco 500, which connects to the mess of ports that go through the building.

Does that change anything? We'd still need the 6 PoE jacks but the rest don't matter.

Thanks again!

 

[gtvr]

Not sure I get the whole picture, tagging this for later