[j_lindsey]

Hello All,

I am one of several individuals working on various parts of designing a WAN/LAN network with a total of 1,000 users, 120 of those are to be Mac machines and the rest PC's. We will be using Visio for our visual representation and I am having questions about how to have it best represented. We are also pricing all hardware and software and running into obstacles all along the way. Thus far we have our Project tracked via MS Project and we are held back by design issues. We have our floor plan per campus; completing the headquarters and are working at setting up the WAN in a mirrored frame relay design. This is just my first question, I have plenty mor questions with not so much time available to find the answers that I am finding and still looking for.

Answer block help,

P.S. - ASAP I am supposed to be sending off an update Monday evening. (School Environment-no job on the line).

Jerry

[cajalat]

What exactly is your question?

[j_lindsey]

I thank you for your time.

I have been trying to find the best way to represent a WAN/LAN emvironment in Visio, as well as come up with a management scheme and disaster recovery plan. I have the basic information, however unfortunately this is the first time that I have had to apply it towards a full fledged design covering one headquarters and four campuses. I truly respect your credentials and my every endeavor will hopefully allow me to obtain as much one day.

I am something of a novice that believes the only way to increase my knowledge is to dive into what is out there. I have a basic understanding of how things work and the various available operating systems. I have a standalone machine with Fedora Core 4 and I mainly use my notebook for everything else that I do. I try to put as much of my extra time into things as I can, especially since I start working on my bachelors degree next month. I have a strong desire to learn even while I am not currently working in IT full-time. I hope to continue to work on my knowledge base so that when the opportunity does approach I will be ready.

[WanGURU09]

On the wan, -will you be bringing all remote users into one geographical site or two separate ?

[chuckhole]

Visio is a fantastic tool for this. Just remember not to get too caught up in the fine details. Use the Network Symbols template to represent your devices. Use the connector tool to connect the devices.

I have spent over six months designing and costing out a $2.4M project to replace our campus fiber, cabling for new buildings and VoIP implementation for a multi-national project. I used Google Earth to download satellite maps of each of our facilities so that actual facilities diagrams could be shown to the Board of Directors.

Changes are being made due to circumstances out of our control. We spec'd out arial fiber runs for some applications and since then, maintenance has added a transformer to one of the poles. Now we have to go underground or run the fiber only 12' off the ground to stay far away enough away from the transformer to adhere to codes. Now we have to requote this run for underground which costs 6x's more per foot. You have to stay flexible.

We are homerunning each of our edge devices to the core with single mode fiber where ever possible. This design will provide for GB access with an upgrade path to 10G. By not starting with switch stacking, it also provides for more growth capacity.