Re: Managed Switch vs. Router

[jpmuus]

I figure I might as well add onto this thread:

Right now we just have a Watchgaurd Firewall and 4 unmanaged 24 port switches at my company. We are having issues with uptime and would like to get some kind of management and monitoring to it. Right now we have a T1 for voice and just a DSL line for data, but are upgrading to a T1 soon. We plan to double in size by next year - currently we have 14 servers and 20 employees, we plan to be at 20 servers and 40 employees next year.

Do you think we should get a 8 port router and keep the unmanaged switches OR do you think we should not get a router and just replace our switches with managed switches? Can you elaborate on which would be better and why?

Thanks,
Jeff M.

[johnwill]

Even though it appears you're having the same problem, please start a new thread when you have a new issue. It's very difficult to keep two problems straight and who's working on what in a single thread.

I've created a new thread for your issue here.

Note: You will need to post complete details of your configuration and your specific issue in this new thread for us to help you.

Thanks for your cooperation.

[johnwill]

What kind of business is this? I'm curious why so many servers and what they all do?

The selection of network topology will be dictated by what kind of network traffic you expect between the machines as well as on the external link. With a couple of T1 lines, you aren't going to saturate any network, that's 3mbit total bandwidth. Are you sure going from DSL is an upgrade? Are you really going for T1 or something faster?