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Computer network design: Replacing the coffee-break napkin discussion.

colporteur

I am looking for input from members in the E14 community that have computer network experience. The block diagram is the drawing of a small farming business network.

image

The network is one IP subnet spread across three physical locations. The subnet has about 50 IP consumed across the three areas. The edge router is in the office. Wireless point-to-point devices connect the seed-plant and residence to the office.

Inside the seed-plant and residence are routers that route the programmable logic controller and home devices, respectively. This routers will remain. What is happening behind the seed-plant router is expanding.

My plan is to replace the current edge router with a router capable of creating multiple networks. Four subnetworks to start: office, seed-plant, residence and wifi-guest-network that doesn't exist today. These networks will be interconnected and have internet access. The new edge router will isolate the the wireless guest-network and provide internet access only. I hope to combine the VPN access into the router and eliminate the VPN appliance.

One valuable resource I miss since retirement is coffee-break time with the team. It was not uncommon for someone to start a discussion on a napkin drawing. The napkin formed a centrepiece for group discussions.

I’m looking for that napkin discussion with members from the E14 Community. I encourage you to ask questions and provide feedback. Even if you don’t have computer networking experience, please join the discussion. Answering your questions may flush out some ideas  I wasn’t thinking about.

After retiring, I took on the role of break-fix for the company that owns this network. Now that the network is stable, and the company is proposing expansion, I feel it is time to implement the network plan I created five years ago.

What are your thoughts?

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  • Hi Sean,

    For a small deployment you can get away with a lot, so it's not unusual to see 'strange' things since they can occur over time as needs change. And that's fine, if it's working and can be managed, although complications may occur as the business grows and their needs change. If you were starting from scratch, you'd make the design more future-proof in terms of maintainability especially, if a more standard layout was followed.

    Generally, a typical design 'pattern' would be to consider the seed plant, and the residence, as 'small branches' of an org, and the office could be considered to be another branch or a HQ. Then, the normal design would be to have a router at each location, i.e. separate network at each site as I think you're planning to do. You can get routers with built-in switch ports, or you could get a separate switch for the sites, and they would hang off the router, rather than the router hanging off switches on sites. And then you could also optionally have VLANs if desired too, that would be supported very easily by this typical design pattern, amd then you'll find you could retire the current separate routers you've got at the two branches, since they could be replaced by VLAN functionality provided the switch supports it, i.e. one less piece of hardware to manage, since I can't see what benefit the router is providing versus if it were replaced by ports on the switch configured for a different VLAN, and then that's one less piece of equipment to configure/manage.

    Regarding manufacturers, such as the ones  mentions, these are well-known manufacturers for equipment designed for business use, which (for many reasons) I'd trust, and Firewalla has a great team behind it (I've personally known a couple of the founders there). These might cost more than typical home routers, but I think still a reasonable cost. Some will have a few built-in switch ports, so you may still need to buy a switch per site too. Example of the type of router I'm thinking of: Cisco 900 or 1100 series perhaps. I don't know the Firewalla portfolio of products in detail, but as mentioned, I expect it to be good too.

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  • Hi Sean,

    For a small deployment you can get away with a lot, so it's not unusual to see 'strange' things since they can occur over time as needs change. And that's fine, if it's working and can be managed, although complications may occur as the business grows and their needs change. If you were starting from scratch, you'd make the design more future-proof in terms of maintainability especially, if a more standard layout was followed.

    Generally, a typical design 'pattern' would be to consider the seed plant, and the residence, as 'small branches' of an org, and the office could be considered to be another branch or a HQ. Then, the normal design would be to have a router at each location, i.e. separate network at each site as I think you're planning to do. You can get routers with built-in switch ports, or you could get a separate switch for the sites, and they would hang off the router, rather than the router hanging off switches on sites. And then you could also optionally have VLANs if desired too, that would be supported very easily by this typical design pattern, amd then you'll find you could retire the current separate routers you've got at the two branches, since they could be replaced by VLAN functionality provided the switch supports it, i.e. one less piece of hardware to manage, since I can't see what benefit the router is providing versus if it were replaced by ports on the switch configured for a different VLAN, and then that's one less piece of equipment to configure/manage.

    Regarding manufacturers, such as the ones  mentions, these are well-known manufacturers for equipment designed for business use, which (for many reasons) I'd trust, and Firewalla has a great team behind it (I've personally known a couple of the founders there). These might cost more than typical home routers, but I think still a reasonable cost. Some will have a few built-in switch ports, so you may still need to buy a switch per site too. Example of the type of router I'm thinking of: Cisco 900 or 1100 series perhaps. I don't know the Firewalla portfolio of products in detail, but as mentioned, I expect it to be good too.

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