Hello experts! I want to open this up for remarks, comments, and suggestions - I'm kind of isolated out here in a small, rural, manufacturing company....
I've purchased a 3Com 3824 gigabit switch, and am wanting to gradually move to gigabit over copper on our network. We have about 12 workstations in the office accessing our ERP's large database - inputting, running reports, printing shop floor assembly drawings - fulltime. At this point, there is no real compelling reason to upgrade our computers in the plant, since they perform adequately at 100Mbs, but I definitely want to move our office computers to gigabit.
In order to utilize the full potential of gigabit ethernet, I need to enable jumbo frames on the workstations and on the servers - but they can't live together on the same network with 'normal-sized' frames. I want to segment the network, putting all of the office computers on one leg on gigabit, and the plant and CNC computers on another running at 100 Mbs. The servers would, of course, belong to the same segment as the office computers - although they have dual-port Intel gigabit server NICs, and I could configure each port for different segments. The new 3Com switch is fully manageable, and setting up VLANS on it is a cinch, but all of the machines on the individual segments need to access the servers and the external router. I still have an older D-Link 10/100 unmanaged switch that could be used in this scenario.
To do this really easily, I understand that I could purchase a layer 3 switch to place between the segments - but that is probably a bit expensive for our 50 machine network, unless someone could point me to a good, inexpensive switch. I could also place a router between the VLANs (or the old and new physical switches, depending....), but I'm hearing that it is slower to route than to switch - but a small-office router is so cheap now, and our network isn't that big.....
Is this worth the trouble - will I see a dramatic performance increase (which is what I'm after)? What is the best way to segment an internal network with the parts and pieces that I have?
This is probably a pretty basic question, but I am interested in your comments and suggestions......thanks!
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