400's as Core Switches

[wattie29]

I am putting together a network for approx. 300 hosts. I have 5 Summit 200 switches and 2 Summit 400's. There are multiple VLAN's. I was planning on using 1 400 as the core switch and using it to route inter VLAN and internet traffic. Each 200 will have a 2GB hunt group to the 400. Do you guys think the 400 is powerful enough to operate at the core.

 

[rn4it]

Wattie29, depending on the amount of uptime it may be better to use both 400's as your core using ESRP, EAPS VRRP and OSPF to handle intervlan routing and redundancy. I wouldn't suggest putting an internet connection into a switch that is also handling inter vlan routing, but place int on a separate device that is placed on the outside of a Firewall.

 

[wattie29]

Hello Mate, the Internet was behind a PIX firewll connected off one of the VLAN's on the 400. I installed this solution as states unfortuneately the 400 only had an edge license so I was unable to use VRRP, EAPS or OSPF. It was put in using RIP.

The network ground to a halt, pinging across the switches was intermittent and network traffic was extremely slow. Any ideas?

 

[rn4it]

Seems like you had a routing loop or broadcast storm. How many VLAN's do you have? I wouldn't think you'd have many. RIP is a little noisey and is meant for internal routing. If you only have a few VLAN's and the network isn't expected to grow much. I'd just use a few static routes. Make the internal address of the PIX the defaul gateway for the 400, which would be the default gateway for the internal network. Have all vlans defined on it with ip forwarding enablad. If there's a fair number of VLAN's and redunacey is a priority, then I'd purchase the licence for full L3 routing on the S400's and enable the ESRP, VRRP or EAPS and OSPF. let me know

 

[wattie29]

Thanks mate, yeah I turned RIP off at one stage to check but no effect. I have 4 VLAN's on that box but don't think I had a broadcast storm as utilisation was really low on the ports.

Maybe the loop is a good shout, I will check the static routes and see if there are any on the PIX bouncing back.

Are there any stats on the S400 to spot loops.

Thanks for the help.

Cheers

Iain

 

[rn4it]

If you do the following command on the Pix port and/or any port that connects edge to the core switches it may help.
show port 1 rx or show port 1 tx
This will show the receive and transmit errors for port 1, if you wish to do it for all ports on the switch just do the following cmd.
show port rx
show port tx
cheers