Setting up switches for bunkhouse Internet

Question

'morning.   I work for a fly in / out mining operation.  We've got 8 bunkhouses that I'm in the process of getting wired Internet made available to, via our T1 connection to site.  Each bunkhouse room will be wired for Cat5e back to a DELL PowerConnect 3448 Layer 2 switch, which is in turn connected via single-mode fibre on a 1000Base-LX SFP back to a DELL PowerConnect 6024F Layer 3 switch.  That switch is connected back to our LAN to get the T1 feed.  I've got our corporate contractor working with me to get firewall configured to keep bunkhouse rooms out of our LAN & get Internet only.   I've set up numerous PowerConnect 5324's on site & they're nice to work with.  These 3448's are the 1st I've worked with, but probably won't be the last, 'cause we'll probably be adding more bunkhouses next year.   Each bunkhouse has 30 rooms, give or take, & will be its own subnet.  DHCP will be provided by my DHCP server(s) back in Administration.   While I was configuring my 1st 3448 just now, I noticed that they have a capability to assign a static IP address to a port.  I'm not all that strong on IP stuff, but I'm curious if this would allow me to set static IP addresses that could match up to my rooms in the bunkhouses.  So let's say for example that we're dealing with my Bunkhouse A, which deals with subnet 10.19.210.  I'm not sure, but would this address assignment allow me to specify that room 1 in the bunkhouse, connected to ethernet port e1 on the switch, could be statically assigned 10.19.210.1?  And that room 2 could be 10.19.210.2 & so on?  I'm just not certain if this is what I'm after, 'cause it seems nice to be able to know that a give IP address will always be a given room.    Would assigning a static IP address to a port mean that the user notebook that will be plugged into that room's port would get that IP address always?  But I'm not sure about what other impact this port assignment would have on me.  It appears that it requires that the ports I assign addresses to have to have a PVID of 1, whereas ports 1-48 currently belong to VLAN 210 & have a PVID of 210.   Any assistance is appreciated   Regards Gary Kajutis

mombodog · Answer

My two cents,   I think you are on the right track as far as your plan, I do not have much knowledge of managed switches but more of DHCP and Static, DHCP is the easy way out for networking, the plug and play of networking lets say, Static means just that, a fixed IP address.   The main thing that can be confusing here is the term 'Port'  hard to answer you question without knowing what is meant exactly by port.   1.  port=ethernet port  RJ45 2.  port=TCPIP port 80 in Windows   which is what IE uses to get web pages   you see where computer language can get messy..   Looking in the documentation at Dell for that switch I cannot tell what is meant by port. It Usually means #2, but hey what do I know about managed switches..   If you can actually do what you want, assign a static IP address to each ethernet RJ45 port, that would be nice, what you need to be sure of is that any static IP's you assign are outside of any DHCP ranges you may have on that subnet to prevent collisions.. What you do not want to happen is DHCP to assign an address that is set for static IP.   Here is the senerio, Bob goes into bunkhouse 7 and connects his lappy to the ethernet port, you have given that port a static IP of 10.19.210.7, well before Bob got his lappy plugged up someone else plugged in before him on the same subnet with DHCP and the switch assigned Bobs static IP to Steve, (DHCP has no idea you have reserved the static IP for bunkhouse7) Now Bob plugs up but the IP address is taken, you can see the problem.    But hey maybe switches are getting smarter these days and prevent this problem..   Sounds like fun..wish I had one to play with..  :-))

Networking, Internet, & Bluetooth

Setting up switches for bunkhouse Internet

Was this post helpful?