Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!


Advice needed regarding home network setup please.
New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.

All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.

Advice needed regarding home network setup please.

Good Morning Everyone,

I'm in need of some advice from the experts here. Little bit of background info first, I just moved into my newly built home. During the construction phase, my friend and I came in and ran about 1500 feet of Cat5e cable and basically installed wired network drops to every room (my office having multiple runs). There are 22 runs in total. Now that we have moved in and are starting to use the runs, I'm going to need to add a switch to the network.

The basic "topology" of the network is like this:

24.x.x.x (Public IP from GPON unit) ---> 192.168.1.x (LINKSYS WRT160) ---> 192.168.2.x (CISCO E1000 VPN)

Most devices will connect to subnet 192.168.1.x, however a few devices need to connect to subnet 192.168.2.x as this VPN connection makes the devices appear to be geolocated in the United States.

I was thinking of buying 2 older Cisco 2950 switches and connecting the WRT160 to one and the E1000 to another. I can mount them in the rack I have (I've included pictures for you to see the setup).

However, reading another thread (lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/433559/), someone mentioned to go and buy a cheap "3550" switch. This got me to thinking that maybe this is a better option and I could setup 24 ports on one VLAN (192.168.1.x) and 24 ports on another VLAN (192.168.2.x)

Now, I'm not an expert with Cisco Switches etc, so my main questions are:

How difficult would this be to setup?
Am I correct in my assumption that the VLAN idea I have proposed would work?
How complex would VLAN setup be on the switch?
Considering I can get a 2950 for $25 Canadian shipped, (will cost about $60 for 3550) should I just buy one of those instead, assuming it can do the VLAN idea as well?

BONUS QUESTION ;) What recommendations would you make for more "robust" routers that can handle OpenVPN, that are still affordable? On a 50Mbit line, I'm getting MAX 14Mbits down because the router just cant keep up. I don't mind older equipment, because honestly, the two routers I'm using now are junk anyways, so who are we kidding ;)

I value the opinions and expertise of the people here, so any comments are REALLY appreciated.

Thanks again
AC

Comments

  • Not sure if the pictures are working. They are shared on Dropbox.... Can anyone see them?

  • no pictures here, try www.imgur.com

  • KerberosKerberos Member
    edited January 2014

    image
    image
    image

  • There we go :)

  • The 3550 does layer 3 so if you ever wanted to play around with inter-vlan routing etc I'd opt for that one. If you're just after the cheapest solution then sure, go for the 2950. For what you're asking though, creating VLANs on the switch is pretty easy. It's been a while, but assuming two VLANs an example would be:

    conf t
     vlan database
      vlan 10
       name NETWORK1
      vlan 20
       name NETWORK2
     
     <!— Add to network1 vlan —>
     interface f0/2
      switchport mode access
      switchpost access vlan 10
      exit
    
     <!— Add to network2 vlan —>
     interface f0/3
      switchport mode access
      switchport access vlan 20
      ^Z
    wr mem
    

    As for your router recommendations, sorry I have no idea. I use a Cisco ASA firewall for my VPNs.

  • Thanks @derp

    When you say "inter-vlan routing", I'm assuming you mean that I could route traffic between 192.168.1.x and 192.168.2.x at the switch as opposed to it going out to the router to be routed back to the switch?

Sign In or Register to comment.