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This is going to be a silly question.

Good friends of mine are opening an ophthalmologist office, and have asked me to provide input on their plans for the IT network. I'm a cybersecurity expert, not a network specialist however.

The job is to be taken care of by a small and local consulting firm. Looking at the design, I was very surprised to see that they have been advised to add an RJ45 outlet per device in every room. Overall, this will result in 80+ RJ45 outlets arriving in the machine room, with some rooms with many devices having over 15 outlets.

Now, my intuition would have been to just have one RJ45 outlet per room, maybe two for the really crowded ones, and use switches to connect everything. It feels to me that having one RJ45 plug per device is going to be very expensive, impractical (How do you handle 80+ cables arriving in the machine room? What happens when you need to add a new device?) and completely overkill.

Is there something I'm missing here? Is this state-of-the art infrastructure design? Grateful for any input!

Executifs
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    The design is correct. Your proposal to use switches in each room to uplink multiple devices to the core switch is a recipe for disaster for too many reasons to list here. Good friends and good consultants don't undertake projects or provide advice and guidance on subjects they have no experience to speak on. Good friends and good consultants put their friends and customers in touch with people who do have the required experience. That's not a dig, that's advice from me to you. – joeqwerty Mar 30 '23 at 16:15
  • Appreciated, but good SO answers also help people understand the stakes better. Good friends may have a hard time figuring out which consultants are good or not and double-checking makes sense in that regard. – Executifs Mar 30 '23 at 16:20
  • best practice would be that each device has its own socket and port on the switch. there I could then lock down to a single allowed Mac address and no one else could use it in the first try with out knowing that Mac. but it is only one of a part of security you should have. I would suggest that you maybe draw a simple infrastructure plan to show the network topology – djdomi Mar 30 '23 at 17:53
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    It sounds like they have already gotten advice from good consultants and instead of seeking a second opinion from another expert, they chose not to. 80 ports if far from a high number. Two 48 port patch panels will handle that and still leave room for 16 more. There are 1000s of available ports in my server room. Well, were. I don't work in a server farm anymore. – DubStep Mar 31 '23 at 13:16
  • @Executifs The less spread devices are, the better. If you can keep all active equipment in a single place (server/communication room), you can serve the network better. You can provide all of them with filtered reliable power, etc. Also, you can have several managed larger devices versus many small unmanaged devices, which is huge increase of control over the network. It is not uncommon to see 400+ jacks in single server room going into big stacked switch (like 6 units of 48 ports each). – Nikita Kipriyanov May 01 '23 at 04:24

1 Answers1

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they have been advised to add an RJ45 outlet per device in every room

That's the way to do it. You should also plan for additional devices in the future.

my intuition would have been to just have one RJ45 outlet per room, maybe two for the really crowded ones, and use switches to connect everything.

If you're pressed for ducting space then that's plan B. Increasing the number of switches that way increases installation cost, power usage and complexity, increasing operative cost and reducing resilience.

Using cheap, consumer-grade switches may be least expensive, but a professional network should use decent, managed switches, costing more than decent cabling.

Note that a cabling installation is going to be used for decades while switches last 5-10 years.

How do you handle 80+ cables arriving in the machine room?

That's not a problem, just two patch panels. Distribution points with many hundred ports are common.

What happens when you need to add a new device?

You plan ahead.

Zac67
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