Question : Networkin main office with branches

Hello experts,

I am doing a network design, there are one company, with 50 branches in the same city.

The central office will have a phone centre that will take orders that will be promoted to the branches.

The orders must be in real time, it is a food company (delivery).

What is the best way in your opinion to make something like that?

Answer : Networkin main office with branches

You don't need a router and a pix for your branch office you can use a Cisco 800 series router that comes with IOS Firewall and does IDS.  This will be more cost effective than a Router and a PIX, although if money is not an issue then the Router and PIX may be the better option.

DSL will work for you, but you wil not get a guarantee from the ISP that it will be up 24/7.  The only was to do this is to get some kind of dedicated service.  This is usually quite expensive.  If you accept the possibiliy of some downtime then the DSL will work for you.  I use DSL in my company and have only had 2 problems in the last 18 months, so thats been an acceptable risk for us.  

With 50 locations I would also setup some kind of Terminal Server environment(Citrix or just Terminal Services) to give you the ability to centrally control everything and give users a good enviroment to connect to your servers via a DSL connection.  With Cisco routers and static IP Addresses at each location you can setup Secure VPN tunnles to each facility.  You might want to consider a T1 at your central office.  I worked for a company with 30 sites, each with Cable or DSL, located all over the country.  We used Citrix and Cisco Routers at each site.  The central office had a 2000 series router and a PIX along with a T1 line.  All the servers were at the central office along with all the IT staff.