[asterisk-users] network design philosophy and practice

[Alex Balashov]

Daniel Hazelbaker wrote:

> I would agree with this as long as you have a decent LAN.  We have  
> about 60 computer workstations and 85 phones on our network.  The  
> entire thing is Gigabit.  Each phone (with a few exceptions that we  
> are running new cable to rectify) has a dedicated ethernet port, no  
> sharing.  We are NOT however separating the data/voice networks.  They  
> are on one VLAN.  We may segment later, but only if the need arises.   
> Right now we have no problems.  I should point out that all of our  
> switches have 2+ gigabit links back to the master switch.  We've never  
> had a problem with the phones other than related to the outside world  
> (telco side).
> 
> I won't argue that "best practice" would probably be to VLAN off the  
> phones, but if you don't have a massive network and are fully gigabit  
> smart switches etc with good cabling, then keeping the two "networks"  
> merged should not be a problem.  I do wholly recommend multiple drops  
> per workstation though.  In a day when I can buy CAT 6 cable for 10  
> cents a foot, there is really just no reason not to be doing multiple  
> drops in new installs.

Yep.  It really depends on how much activity there is on the LAN.  Sure, 
if you've got a large network with 250 megabits of bursty traffic 
swinging through there consistently, or doing large amounts of 
multicast, then partitioning the voice off on a dedicated VLAN makes a 
lot of sense.

One problem for which I've never found a satisfactory solution is busy 
call centers where the agents are all on softphones (to save money, of 
course).  The IT staff are never willing to accommodate the relatively 
large amount of reconfiguration required to do VLAN trunking into every 
agent's workstation in order to provide a feed into the voice VLAN for 
the softphone.  I'm not a Windows guy, so I don't even know how easily 
or readily Windows supports 802.1q trunking, although surely it does in 
principle.  Either way, it's something that seemingly nobody ever wants 
to do.

-- Alex

-- 
Alex Balashov
Evariste Systems
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