We are planning a small network in my office. 40 people. I am thinking about star topology. One Router which connects to few switches. Say few 24 post switches.
What do you experts suggest, one switch for each department? Business will expand in few years.
You will need to consider many things here, before concluding that you only need three switches here.
1. You have to check the distance of your router to where you are going to put the switches.
2. If your router is in the center of the building, then it is possible to hook all three switches to one router. But if not, you have to use another switch or simply hook it to the nearest switch nearby. 100 meters is the most length of a CAT 5e cable that you can use. Exceeding it will cause you problems.
3. Also you need to buy high speed switches so that it will not cause you much traffic, within your whole network and same goes for the router. Invest as much as possible on these devices. It will be of good use even to the future growth of your business.
You'll need to have a fast Internet service to accommodate all computers connected. More computers connected to the network needs more bandwidth.
A router in between plus 24 post switches is not bad at all. It will definitely give each computer access to the Internet. The only problem here is, the distance and of course the IP Address you have subscribed to. Well, you're into business so, most likely you will get a Static IP address.
Each computer should have their own IP address to prevent IP Address conflict. Switch does all that, however if there are multiple switches and computers, then you need to be familiar with networking.
You can contact an expert for that, probably your IT guy knows how to. A router itself can accommodate 200 computers in theory but in reality, no one ever tried it. So, putting switches on each building and every room is not a bad idea at all. But you'll need to be more concerned of the Internet speed on each, because this might affect the productivity of your employees if the Internet keeps lagging.
