In a real-world scenario, you almost never want to buy new hardware, travel with that hardware to your customer and open the boxes there in hope you have a genius idea, which makes all the network work together. Instead, you stage the network equipment first, meaning you setting it up at home or at work, make sure the functionality is given, and then ship it to the customer.
The first device we normally stage is a switch. Because the switch is the core device of each network. It’s the thing that connects all internal devices together. If you are asking yourself, why don’t just buy one gigantic switch, and connect all the devices together with this device? Sometimes you actually can do this. But you have to consider more topics, like redundancy. If that one gigantic switch goes down, how much money we are losing per hour? So often it is more reliable and less messy to buy 2 switches, set those up redundant and call it a day. Back in the days, that redundancy could be pretty complicated, but today with auto-MDIX it shouldn’t be that big of a deal.
Things to remember
- Stage first, because it’s the safest place to catch mistakes.
- The switch is the center of the local wired network.
- The wireless access point extends that network into the air.
- The router connects the local network to the internet.
- Multiple switches can add flexibility and redundancy, but they also add design decisions.