Switches
What is a Switch?
A switch is a piece of core network technology that connects the schools buildings that provide connectivity services to the network. These include services local to the school and connect up to the rest of the network to access resources. These are normally defined as physical connectivity LAN (local area network) where Ethernet is used to connect. The core services include but not limited to -
Devices - IP phones, WAPS, cameras, laptops, workstations
POE - Power Over Ethernet, particularly important for WAPS and IP phones and other power devices where they get powered over Ethernet.
Uplinks connectivity - backbone fibre connectivity, this is the backbone of the school. real high speed here. Minimum 10GB
The switch provides many services access, though not limited to the above however it is vital piece of technology enabler to the school.
How does CSPD use switches?
If you have a device (laptop, iPhone, iPad, IP phone) and need to access services to the network, your device will be using the switch as a method to connect to the network. The switch is an enabler and provides connectivity in which you access your service via. Any internet service, Google classroom, content filtering, etc it traverses the switch from where you are connected from.
Cisco IP Phones, WAPS (Wireless Access Points) in this particular point are important to this piece as the POE (Power Over Ethernet) is provided by the switch. Each port on the switch can provide 60W of power to a port. From wireless point of view this is vital as to enable wireless we need enough power on the switch to allow the WAP to work and provide the throughput through the MGig Ports' that the switches have. Mgig Ports are the evolution of the next step to switches as these provide on Ethernet connections 10GB for Ethernet. The end device has to support that which the devices are catching up, though this gives CSPD the benefit of ensuring throughput to the new Wireless Standards and POE requirements for these wireless standards that we can meet the throughput of the wireless. There is no bottleneck from throughput to the AP point of view.
Additional Information:
At times things go wrong, whether there are power issues or fibre cable cuts or even hardware failures, these are not limited in what could go wrong. The most common that could happen to the school are:
Power outage, to the switch or the cabinet
Network down, cant browse the internet/internal site
The easiest and most efficient way to resolve this is to log a ticket with Service desk. As the very first step, we would need photos of the cabinet where the switch is, this is called cabinet. Please get these photos and attach to the ticket when getting created. Let your TSO know that the switch is down and to notify Service desk so that it gets passed on. Once it gets to First level support, a ticket will ether be created with our network support vendors to troubleshoot further.
Switch Port Numbers:
Below is a diagram of the numbering order for Cisco Switches.
Common troubleshooting
Use of ping via command line
Ping the services locally
Ping a website on the internet / local
If the ping to the local service responds then connectivity within the network works, if the ping does not, there could be a disruption to the connectivity which is causing the outage/loss of service. If ping to any service doesn't work, there is a disruption to a service where the ping is initiated from (ie AP's / switches that your device is connecting from is having problems.)
This helps Isolate the issue of where the Problem resides on and is a great help in troubleshooting steps.