Jeff-
I don't know all the details of your environment, especially the political
dynamics, but here's my first thoughts on how to do this.
1. Designate your central location as the Data Center, at least for this
discussion.
2. Pick 3-4 of your larger sites to use as regional distribution points. Try to
select sites that central a cluster of many smaller sites.
3. Connect your data center and regional distribution sites with High Speed
pipes (DS3's maybe, depending on your bandwidth requirements). Use a partial
mesh, with the Data Center connected to all regional sites, and each regional
site connected to it's closest neighbor.
4. Create a frame cloud providing all your end point (spoke) sites with an
appropriate connection to the frame cloud. Your region sites should have high
speed pipes (Frac DS3/DS3) to the cloud. Each cluster of spokes within a region
should have a primary PVC mapped to the closest regional site. You should
consider a secondary PVC mapped to the next closest regional site.
5. Consider creating redundant connections via the cloud between your core
network sites. Again, a partial mesh should be fine, but mesh in a different
format than with the Point-point ciruits.
Drop me a line if you want more detail. I'm not sure how all this would cost out
compared to what you've already got, but it gives you much more fault tolerance.
Joe Freeman, CCDA
Jeff DeLoach wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I've recently been given the task of building my company's WAN from the
> ground up, and have been going over design after design, and finally think
> I've found a solution. I would be interested in some input from people on
> this list, though, who have more experience w/ this sort of thing than I
> do--I've been doing WAN stuff for nearly 2 years now, but nothing on this
> scale...Here's the scenario:
>
> We have nearly 200 sites that need to connect back to the central office, a
> number that is constantly growing. These sites are scattered all over the
> US--10 different states right now, with more to come as the year rolls on.
> I need to provide all the sites with internet access, as well as allow the
> staff here in the main office to communicate, both via email (and,
> eventually, w/ video via Netmeeting or ICQ), and with Reachout to remotely
> troubleshoot sites. Each site has a database that is between 10-50 Mb that
> needs to be backed up at the home office once a week ; additionally, each
> site also runs our proprietary software that we seem to constantly upgrade,
> so we need to be able to send updates across the wire as well. Down the
> road, the development team is looking at moving to an ASP-based model, which
> would remove the need for each site to have an individual database or
> software upgrade, but would really increase the amount of traffic on the WAN
> links. Additionally, the designers are also looking at employing streaming
> video to the desktop for the remote sites as well, so the bandwidth
> requirements are rather large, and multicast needs to be taken into
> consideration as well.
>
> Here's the scenario I proposed:
>
> We would get an OC-3 pipe from MCI-WorldCom here at our main site, which
> would then in turn connect to a Cisco 6000-series switch w/ a router module
> in it. The main OC pipe would then be broken into T1 links and sent out to
> each site via MCI's frame cloud. Each site will have a Cisco 2610 router
> that will connect to a lower-end switch, probably a Catalyst 1900, to allow
> all users at each site (usually between 30-60 people) to connect to the
> internet and be in touch w/ the home office. I want to set up queuing on
> the router to allow video traffic to have the highest priority. In effect,
> I'm setting up the main office as sort of an ISP--this is the way it has to
> be, for political and financial reasons. All the satellite sites must
> connect back to us, and then go out to the internet. All sites run only
> TCP/IP.
>
> Now, here are my questions.
>
> 1. From what MCI tells me, OC-x links are ATM. I want to use frame relay
> to connect the remote sites, rather than have the 2610's at each site have
> to perform LANE--I don't even know if they do LANE or not. The 6000-series
> switch is a pretty powerful piece of equipment, but am I asking too much of
> it to handle all the work here? I've scoured Cisco's website, and I can't
> find out if the 6000 will do LANE either. How would I go about translating
> ATM cells to Frame Relay frames?
>
> 2. What sort of routing protocol should I use? I was thinking of OSPF,
> simply because I don't want to clog up the links w/ routing table
> advertisements. The remote sites won't be talking to each other all that
> much--I'm envisioning more of a "hub-and-spoke" kind of arrangement. Also,
> will I need to use BGP at the main site, and make one big AS out of my home
> site and all my remote sites?
>
> 3. Where would you put a firewall in this design?
>
> 4. Is the 6000 switch/router idea the best way to go here, or should I have
> a pure router, like a 7000-series?
>
> OK, that's all. Thanks for reading this far. All comments welcome, feel
> free to pick this design apart if you wish. Like I said, I've been doing
> this for nearly 2 years, but nothing on this sort of scale, and I'm feeling
> a bit overwhelmed, and I really don't want to screw this up, so all
> suggestions are welcome.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Jeff DeLoach
>
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