[rescue] Advice on 10/100 switches

[Chris Byrne]

Robert,

If you can get a cheap foundry FastIron workgroup switch or a NetIron
switching router those would be ideal. I've seen a LOT of them go by on
auction from the .com liquidators out there, and I've been severely
tempted to grab one just for myself. I actually saw a BigIron 4000 fully
loaded with 3 10/100 cards and a GigE card go by for $1000 (the guy
obviously didn't know what it was) but I didn't have the cash on hand to
grab it at the time.

The real question is how VLANable do you want to go, because if you
don't get a layer three box you are going to have to give up at least
one port to trunk to the router, and that assumes both the switch and
router support the same vlaning and trunking method, which generally
means a 290x and 200x or something similar, or you lose one port from
every VLAN to the router, and have to have the ports on your router
etc... etc... And besides router on a stick is so inefficient there's no
point in using it for L3 operations.=20

As far as full layer three switches go you really have two options at a
somewhat reasonable price and availability, Cisco (2948G-L3, 4000, 5000,
6000 series), and the Foundries I mentioned above. Actually the 6000
series is ridiculously overpriced, but you should be able to get a good
deal on cat 4k's or cat 5ks. Important to note that older revisions
(prior to about six months ago if I recall correctly) do not support
ACL's on inter VLAN routing. There are L3 offerings from Lucent, Nortel,
and 3com but my experience with them has been pretty poor, they are all
WAY overpriced, and they didn't sell too many of them so there aren't
all that many available.=20

As far as the foundries go, prices are all over the map. New they
generally beat Ciscos retail price, but NO-ONE EVER PAYS RETAIL FOR
CISCO. I've seen Cisco discounts as high as 45% off list. Used prices on
foundries are all over the map since the market isn't really large
enough or stable enough to get proper baselining.=20

Of all your options, I'd go for a BigIron 4000 if you can get one cheap,
a FastIron-wg, or a NetIron. They'll give you the best
cost/performance/feature mix.

Chris Byrne

=20

-----Original Message-----
From: rescue-admin at sunhelp.org [mailto:rescue-admin at sunhelp.org]On
Behalf Of Robert Rose
Sent: 29 August 2001 10:00
To: rescue at sunhelp.org
Subject: [rescue] Advice on 10/100 switches


Hey rescuers,

I'm looking for advice on a used 16 - 24 port 10/100 UTP switch for my=20
rescue network, features I'd like:
- blinkenlights
- rackmountable
- SNMP manageable
- VLAN-able
- expandable if I ever rescued something with FDDI or ATM
- respectable brand

I've currently got a couple of kalpana 15 port jobbies and a few
synoptics=20
2803's but I'd like to rationalise the rack space and be able to go
faster=20
than 10Mb.

I've been bidding on cisco 2924s on ebay but the prices seem to be a bit

high for what I can really afford.  I've found some cheap cat5000's
locally=20
but I've had problems with them and hme interfaces in the past.

I need advice on what other brands/models are good.  The baystack 350's=20
seem a bit more affordable, the 3Com superstacks even more so, but I
have=20
zero clue about how good they are or if there are any issues with any of

the systems/NICs I have or may rescue.

Any input would be appreciated.

thanks,

Rob.

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