Thanks very much for the replies so far, much appreciated.
Also to be detailed would need to know distances between switches (different rooms?) and the max bandwidth requirement of each device
Although the building is over two floors, the maximum distance should be less than 40 meters.
Cost is always a factor and cat6 may be 20% more or so than 5e, so may not be cost-effective to wire every device cat 6 (assuming none need the speed) but would definitely consider cat 6 for the interconnects between switches and router. Again future proofing to consider but unless your devices need 1Gb connections 5e should cover the device links.
As none of the devices are particularly intensive (PCs accessing the net, shared printers, VOIP phones and and 4MP IP cameras), it may just be easier to go with Cat 5e cable for the most part which will avoid any terminating and bending issues as mentioned by Midland, and then Cat6 for joining switches?
if you lose the top 16 port switch you lose all connectivity, might be better to have all 4 switches individually connected to the router in a star topology via a switch at the router itself
This is true and because the router itself is also a switch, all devices would still be able to talk to each other?
may want to consider VLANs for each to get more control (again would depend on spec).
How would I go about setting up VLANs, are they worth having? I assume they section off an amount of bandwidth just for the phones?
And, of course, if your ADSL is poor, much of this won't work well. And what happens if your ADSL goes down?
Surely poor internet connectivity wouldn't stop devices talking to each other properly though? We're going to have a 100MB leased line put in and hopefully a broadband line backup too.
Put the HomeHub in "bridge" or "modem" mode and get a proper router / firewall. This will also let you have a backup internet connection with a 3G stick if you need.
Cat 5e cable should be fine.
Thanks, can you recommend a decent router firewall we should be using for a small business? Why not stick with the BT hub?
You would do better wiring it all back to a central cabinet and having a 48 port switch.
I understand this would provide the most efficiency but it may not be possible to have that many wires going into the same room as the building is a bit of an odd configuration. Would it still work ok with the switch layout I've drafted and Cat6 between switches?
Again, thanks for the help so far chaps and sorry for all the questions. Much appreciated!
