thanks for the nice comments about the site !
Its been a long day and I've just been warming my brain cells on a fictional network design scenario for the site that we're thinking of doing as a complete sort of 'walkthrough' to designing a large network. Its got elements of everything you've asked.. unfortunately its miles away from over yet.. okay I'm rambling !!
Q2. DHCP v/s static - The advantage of DHCP is that you don't have to manually configure IPs on every single machine that you have networked -- Its also easy when you need to make some change to the addressing scheme, the change is just made in one centralised place. Static IPs are nice because they make troubleshooting easier, you can identify immediately which machine is which (this is also possible in DHCP but thats beyond the scope of this post). Btw DHCP will generate some broadcast traffic.
You should use static IPs for the servers (so that they don't keep changing where they live ) and dynamically assign IPs to the small fry ..
Q5. Now when you're using the private addresses you're not bound to use just 192.168.6.* this is a class C private IP block which gives you 255 hosts to play around with.. you can use any private address you like and subnet them at will. Chop those babies up !! It will make things better.
If you want to segment the Prepress network from everyone else, you could do it with subnetting (and the appropriate access list on the router) or you could use VLANs (virtual lans) at your switch.
Q6. I just asked Chris and Tom the same thing lol, some people recommend Visio.
I strongly recommend that you go over the basic material in the site, you'll find detailed answers for all your questions there. Pity the walkthrough isn't up, its being done precisely to help people in your predicament, who have a few questions and want to know why things are done in a certain way.
Anyway good luck, we all know that a network thats been badly setup the first time is a serious headache for the next guy to sort out -- you're a brave man/woman.
Sahirh as covered most of your questions.
Q1. It doesn't matter if they are 1 foot or three feet as long as they are less than 100 meters. There is no minimum distance as far as I know. It is a standard size sold in the stores, however.
Thanks to all who have responded. I had read quite a few of the tutorials. In fact Googling for subnetting is what got me to this site. You'd almost have to be braindead to not understand the numbers of subnetting after readiing the turorial. The area where I'm still a little confused is how it is implemented. Sure you can go the the various nodes and change the IPA and subnet mask but what does one do to get these various subnets to talk with each other? Does this involve a managed switch or a router? If the router is between the 10/100 switch don't I lose my gigabit speed by having to come out to the router through the 10/100 switch. If I want to use VLANs then what level of managed switch do I need? Layer 2 or 3 and what is the main difference twixt the two.
BTW I downloaded a trial version of SolarWinds. They have a sweet subnet calulator and IPA generator that really helps one to see how subnetting numbers works.
The whole point of subnetting is to limit broadcasts.
A broadcast is done pretty much whenever one host wants to find another host , among other things (actually, it looks at its arp cache first - but this is just a simplified explanation). It broadcasts for the IP address to get the MAC address (ARP) of the host it is trying to talk to.
If the host is on your subnet, it would respond with its MAC address and then you would send your packets to it using the MAC address as well as the IP address.
If the host you are trying to talk to is not part of the subnet and there is no router (or you have no default gateway defined) - you would get a "Destination unreachable". This would happen even if you have a switch with 2 subnets on the switch.
If the host is not part of the subnet and there is a router (your default gateway), then the router would respond with its MAC address and the you would send your packets to the router. The router would then "route" the packets on.
You can use VLANs on a switch to segment your network, but all you are really doing is setting up separate subnets and you can't route between them, without some type of routing function. Some switches are Layer 3 switches (routing switches) and typically need special options to handle the routing, but this allows you to route between subnets using only a switch.
So you need a router to talk between subnets, whether you are using a router or a Layer 3 switch.
Layer 2 handles the packets using the MAC address and Layer 3 handles the packets using the IP addresses. Switches are normally Layer 2 devices ( but as mentioned you can have a Layer 3 switch - which is really router). Routers are a Layer 3 device.
You really want to read the section on routing. It is under Networking/Routing and should answer most of your questions.
New to networking, many questions.