Network topology for a school or small business?

WortonTech

Bronze Level Poster
This depends on services, redundancy and failover.

Network Topology types are old school now. There is so much diversity in networks that a typical star network or an old token ring network does not really apply a lot in the industry.

It is more Core and layered distribution. You have a core switch, or rather 2 of them with resiliency and link up with something like LACP - i did this video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rteZD5BiREk which looks at that.

Then you think about the distribution of services - you will have clients, servers, telephony, wifi, video, secure networks, links to other sites etc. You will then need to find out who needs to access what, think about VLAN segregation and routing. Think about spanning tree and quick convergence and what happens when someone loops the network. What about video, or any multicasting protocol. What about 802.1x or NAC ? Firewall topology and finally what happens if it all fails, how does this "heal" itself ?

Finally there are other considerations like PCI-DSS, and iso27001 if the company is aiming this way.

I have done so many network deployments from a simple 3 switch install to a 280 switch install across 5 sites with redundant links. If you need any help let me know.
 
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