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arakis

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Campus Network design and management/configuration

Dear All,

If you were going to design a small network, say 400 node across 4 seperate buildings connected via fibre, had a tiny budget, wanted gigabit to the floor, mulitple vlan capacity along with easy-to use network/vlan management and config software, what would you suggest? I've got a clean sheet, so not tied to any particular hardware or software but only a small budget.

I'm discounting Cisco as too expensive, have looked at Netgear but NMS doesnt seem to allow for VLAN management. I know HP Openview but again too expensive. Are there any  comprehensive opensource network management tools eg Freenac?

Realise this is a very open question, just looking for some pointers and to find out what others have done in a similar situation.

A.
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arakis

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Hi Agriesser,

Ok thanks - I hadn't considered Cisoc/Linksys kit - will take a look.

Re. Network management - Its the configuration I'm after. Not really concerned about monitoring as will use a mix of Cacti for graphing and Xymon for snmp trapping. Would like to have the ability through a central interface to assign a port on any of the switches to a specific vlan eg. Client A user decides they wants to plug a voip phone into Port 5 on swtich 2 in building 3 but that port is currently assigned to the DMZ1 VLAN. Would like the on-site First line guy to be able to just go to a pretty interface and do the neccesary from there. So I'm assuming switches will need to be GVRP capable? but otherwise I'm hoping the rest can be done through software management.

Hope that all makes sense.

A.
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Thanks for ideas - have split th epoints as failry as I could :-)