The decision of 100Mb vs. 1 Gb is strictly budgetary in my opinion. Concurring with most of the posts here, the bandwidth is excessive by today’s standards so the decision is not necessarily one of a technical nature. However, if implementing new switch infrastrcuture AND considering a VOIP solution for the PBX requirements, I’d go to Gig now and assure a solid infrastructure for many moons to come. The last thing the finance guys are going to want hear in 5 years is the need for another infrastructure project to upgrade to Gig (the industry will eventually find a way to suck up the bandwidth that we today call excessive).
I do think the implementation of a station-side switch for this application would throw wrench into the works. At a minimum, POE will not pass through the station switch to my knowledge - so now you have to add a power supply to the phones OR add a POE injector behind the station switch. Additionally, and I’ve got a call out to my VOIP geek colleagues to confirm, the QOS function on the infratructure side will be compromised since you’ve now got two MAC addresses in the same collision domain - I could be wrong and will verify as time permits. If I’m not mistaken, it is the QOS function that seperates the MAC of the phone to a VLAN on which resides the voice-mail device, switch/router acquired for the VOIP equivalent of a PBX and phone administration machine(s).
Finally, and this is just anecdotal, seems like every time I drop a small 4 port switch on or under someone’s desk, some knucklehead will loop and ethernet cable and start a broadcast storm. Just one more part to troubleshoot (we’ve actually started filling empty switch ports with unterminated RJ-45 connectors - they’re removable for expansion unlike my proposal to fill them with epoxy).
If I hear back from one of the VOIP gurus with an answer on the QOS items I’ll put up another post.
I totally agree if building a new network to do 1gb capacity since the added cost at that point is not appreciable vs putting in old technology.
The biggest challenge is most of the businesses we handle are still under significant budget constraints, even a small incremental dollar amounts can stop solutions from moving forward and yet a solution has to be found. It is usually, "Can you find a cheaper alternative? We just can't afford that right now."
I find it incredibly rewarding to work with some of the business owners we work with. Most of these guys have had to put dollars into their businesses to make payroll at different and sometimes extended periods over the last few years. One guy put in $300k over six months to keep his employees going--knowing he was going to downsize his employees by 85% at the end of that period (Chinese outsourcing and two major clients postponed and reduced orders).
We should be doing a full conversion in the next few weeks. (Nice to have a job where the decision makers want it done right and have a budget.) I will spend 15 minutes with our Shoretel guy and ask him about his thoughts.
Do appreciate your thoughts.