home runs to switches for all pc's or homeruns to switches and then pcs

[Basslips]

Our company is moving and we are starting fresh at a new office building. we have about 60 pc's and 10 printers. our current network is setup with five 12 port switches through the office with 10 pc's connected and a home run from the switch to a 24 port smart switch in the server room.

Is it better to do homeruns for all pc's to switches in a main server room or do it like we have it now with homeruns to, say, 5 switches throughout the office and then run 10-12 lines to pc's and printers?

we have a quote for 25k to run all power and phone and data lines and we're trying to save some money. any comments would be appreciated.

Basslips

[Steve R Jones]

Guess a lot depends on the layout of the floorplan....

With the 12 port switch - do you have cables running all over the place with trip hazzards etc?

Is office appreance a factor?

If you're going to have to run new phone lines for everyone - you might as well run the datalines at the same time.... It'd only be an extra cost for the cable and better dual plug wall jacks.

[GroundZero3]

Normally you have a MDF/IDF with the switches and all the cabling punched down in the switch racks. Thats how you professionaly do it.

[Basslips]

yes, we do have and will have punchdown racks in the main server room which will go to the switches regardless of where they are located.

we are buying new cubes with built-in wiring. we want it to look good also.

we are running new phone and data lines.

the issues are cost and performance, with performance being my preference and cost being the bosses preference.

my thoughts are that running fewer cables to 5 switches rather than to 60 pc's would be cheaper and less work thus reducing cost. is it better to run homeruns for performance?

[GroundZero3]

Are these managed or unmanaged switches?

Troubleshooting can be an issue if you have all these cables running around instead of central location where everything is patched down.

Would you run into any issue? Probably not and it will do what you want it to do.

[Basslips]

the five switches are unmanaged going into a managed switch.

GROUNDZERO: which do you suggest? homeruns or switches near the pc's?

[GroundZero3]

Well if you have a budget you are gonna have to work in it, the biggest issue you will run into is loops on the network if your users start trying to plug cables into the switches. Other than that what you want to do will work just fine.

[stroyal]

I've always looked at switches, that are not in the central data room, as for an upgrade down the road, or like my workshop, where I never know how many computers I'll have.

I only do simple stuff like home networks, but always use all home runs, on a new installation

The only other reason, I would use a switch, outside the data room, is if the computers, are more than 325' from the central data room.


Edit,
Oh, and welcome to TechIMO!

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

Hi,

You'll have to bear with me as 1) I've never heard of "home runs" other than baseball [and I don't really care about those either] and 2) I've started drinking the vodka reasonably heavily already...

From the sounds of things, you're thinking about having a main switch ("S1") that has a few connections, each of which goes out to other switches (for ease, I'll refer to these as sub-switches, "SS1", "SS2" -->>) and then these go to the computers....right..?

The main issue you might run into with this could be the bottleneck of network traffic when trying to access a central data source (like a server) as each machine on each of the sub-switches would be competing for their share of the bandwidth ('pipe') to the main switch.. For example, if a computer is trying to access a central resource from "SS1" then any other machine on "SS1" would be competing... This would only be an issue when multiple users who are connected to the same sub-switch are trying to access simultaneously - but the WAN link would most likely be more of a bottleneck anyway........... (re-reading shows that some of that paragraph might be slightly out of sequence )

Whenever I've cabled a new office, I've run trunking round the walls (and/or above the suspended ceilings and then down a pillar/etc) and then had multi-port doofreys mounted in places that are suitable for where the desks would be going...but this could potentially eat into what budget you have...in which case you could try to do a combination of 'proper' structural cabling and what I think sounds like the 'homerun' thing you're talking about.. Just remember that phone cables can't go into a switch, so these would need to be connected directly (or via patch panels and/or couplers) to the phone system...


I've worked in places that had started out using the 'home run' type cabling, but after a reasonably short time, they realised that it would've actually been better to have had the cabling installed properly (in trunking, directly attached to the back of the patch panel/s and then patched to the switch/es) and would've looked better...

[stroyal]

I can translate from English to English.

A home run is a cable that goes all the way back to the main data panel or room.
We would still use a patch panel, and patch into the switch.
In that case the home run would go to the back of the patch panel.

So if you have all home runs, every computer, and network device has its own cable going all the way back to the main patch panel.

Electricians use the same term (Home Run) for the wires that go back to the breaker panel.

A Brit that doesn't like baseball, who would have thunk it.

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

I should just point out that a "home run" isn't English......and American isn't my first language...

As I mentioned/insinuated before, that method would minimise any bottlenecks in your network, and would also mean that a group of users who were using the same sub switch wouldn't be taken offline should their sub switch fail, lose power, etc...as a 'home run' doesn't actually need any power, and should a cable break then you'd only lose on device...

Having said all that, I do have to admit that my domain at home (yes, I run a FQDN at home, with all domain type features... ) does have three switches in use - but that's only as I don't have the bottlenecking issue, as the sub switches only have one machine connecting at a time...but I might want/need to connect another machine quickly if I'm building/repairing a machine for someone..