I am in progress early stages of building out a new network for a school. I wanted to ask whether I should be considering layer 2 or layer 3 switches, obviously the layer 3 switches are more expensive. In the most basic summary of expected usage, there will be staff/ student Wifi Vlans, Access Control/ camera vlans, phone vlan, printer vlan. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
I would really recommend you get a managed switch that supports VLAN’s but you generally don’t necessarily need a switch that has routing functions.
I am I am looking at unify layer 2/layer 3 switches however there’s a nearly $500 price difference between the two.
If you are looking at Unifi, just go with Layer2
Unifi layer3 implementation is not good
Layer 2 is all you need for VLAN’s. IF you are going to do routing on the switch then get layer 3. Typically the routing is done by a firewall unless you have a special use case for routing on the switch.
I work for a school district. All layer 2 switches and routing is on the fortinet.
Seems like you only need VLANs so L2 switches should suffice. Also make sure to remove “ALL” untagged ports from the switches so that there are no conflicting DHCP broadcasts on any switch port, I made this mistake in my house and the network came crashing down 