If money was no object...what switch would you chose?

[SteveAudus]

Here is a little topic you all have an opinion on,

If money was no object, and you had to purchase 40+ new switchs and fibre coventors to last about 5 years and hopefully beyond,

what would you buy....?

http://www.chaucer.sheffield.sch.uk

 

[vipergg]

Of course everyone will probably say go the Cisco because money really does have to be no object when buying these as they are overpriced for many things . There are many good switches out there , Extreme, Foundry makes real nice switches also . Not sure how Nortel is these days . On the lower price end is HP which makes a pretty nice switch for the money and has a lifetime warranty I believe .

 

[wybnormal]

Not enough info.. what type of switches? Chassis? blade? stackable? strictly core or edge also?

Why fiber converters?

MikeS

Find me at

http://www.packetattack.com

"Take advantage of the enemy's unreadiness, make your way by unexpected routes, and attack unguarded spots."
Sun Tzu

 

[BuckWeet]

Catalyst 6500 as core, with 4500's or 3650/3750 as your access switches


BuckWeet

 

[SteveAudus]

You see I have a ton of 3 year old Micronet 16 & 24 port switches, and loads of tiny Micronet Fibre convertors linking them together across our site. I have to replace them as many of the switchs are falling over, we are also expaning our network into a new building so the same switchs everywhere would make sense, but which?

Any other suggestions?

Thanks
Steve

http://www.chaucer.sheffield.sch.uk

 

[wybnormal]

Honestly, the 3550 with the EMI code base is a more capable switch in some areas then the 6500 series chassis. The 6500 has a larger port density so that is something to consider. But on the 3550, any port can be a router port and the router on a stick for vlans is no more. Also, the 3550 supports the newest spanning tree protocol and VLAN access lists.

So some homework is needed here. Port density will probably drive alot of the specification. Whatever you do, seriously consider TWO core switches for redundency. NOthing ruins your parade sooner then the core going belly up in the middle of the day

If you have fiber, you are ahead of the game already.

---edgeswitch---fiber-----perimeter---fiber---core

The edge will aggergate the users to a pair or more of fiber runs. The perimeter switch just aggergates the edge devices. Not a requirement, just a nice to have. THe core is is the core of the network. The server farm should feed a perimeter switch which feeds the core.

cabinet1------------|
cabinet2------------switch------------core
cabinet3------------|

MikeS


Find me at

http://www.packetattack.com

"Take advantage of the enemy's unreadiness, make your way by unexpected routes, and attack unguarded spots."
Sun Tzu

 

[MTandSAV]

I agree with Buckweet..however might even go for 6500 all the way...if you need a lot of ports and just to make sure your cpu load doesn't get above 5%

CCNA, CCNP..partly

 

[lgarner]

I'd go Cisco. I've also had great success with HP, but never used their layer-3 switches. 3550 looks like a very nice unit.

Never again will I use Extreme.

 

[vipergg]

Cisco is the leader but they aren't without there own issues , there Catalyst 4000 line was one of the most unreliable pieces of gear i have seen , we have replaced literally dozens of supervisor cards on these . As far as the 6500's go , the new 720's I'm already a little leary of these , we have installed 3 of these recently and have already seen 3 failed cards on these , 1 supervisor and 2 distributed forwarding cards .

 

[BuckWeet]

We just rolled out 3 new data centers using the Sup720 3BXLs..

we put in 150+ 6500's luckily we didn't have any bad blades.. I was rather shocked..

As for the person who posted the "3550 being able to have each port as a router port" any layer 3 switch from cisco can do this..


BuckWeet

 

[wybnormal]

Buck, that was me and the 3550 is one of the most cost (5K average street price without corporate discount) effective units to have this feature and that is a single unit and 48 ports. Thats the only point.. not that it was the only unit to do it. You will note that I specifically stated that his port density will drive his spec to what switch is appropiate. I've seen too many times that a customer has been sold a chassis when one or two stackables are a much more cost effective design. Of course, the stackables do not have the panache or bragging rights of a big ol' chassis.

Viper - My experience with the 4500 chassis has been mixed. In a controlled world, they were fine. In an IDF with heat fluctuations and power issues (even with a UPS) they did not do so well. We lost 2 sups in a week on the same unit. 3rd time was the charm.

Losing 3 sups on the 6500 was worse. It wasnt till the 3rd sup from Cisco failed inside of 48 hours that Cisco admited that perhaps the chassis was bad and they FedEx'ed a new chassis out.. however many pounds that was overnight. To their credit, they stuck with the ticket till it was working correctly again.

MikeS

Find me at

http://www.packetattack.com

"Take advantage of the enemy's unreadiness, make your way by unexpected routes, and attack unguarded spots."
Sun Tzu

 

[SteveAudus]

Thanks for all the suggestions

Steve

http://www.chaucer.sheffield.sch.uk

 

[networkgod99]

No matter what, you should choose Nortel and pay 1000% more than the retail price .. why? because then maybe my damn stock will go back up!

 

[baddos]

No matter what, you should choose Nortel and pay 1000% more than the retail price .. why? because then maybe my damn stock will go back up!

rofl lmao!

 

[ccmuser]

Go 3750 stackwise across the board.

Two GIGE fibre only for the core or your network..

ANd add as many as you want to your closets.. Quite a capable piece of Gear.

 

[RookThis]

My 2 cents for what it's worth. I don't believe a 3550 if used for routing supports features like NAT, so I would do as someone suggested, some homework to make sure it's going to do all that you need.

 

[buraglio]

We just did this......
We went with a cisco solution because they met more criteria than any other.
The decision really depends on what you need to do on your network. Foundry is nice for an inexpensive, reelatively dense, somewhat feature rich solution. They are lacking in some things, like poor multicast and ipv6 support. Extreme is not too bad either, especially with their new OS (if you can get over the CLI). They support a lot of the nice features like a programmable ASIC and some pretty dense boxes. I've never seen their multicast perform (or tried) and have had terrible luck with some black diamonds (the non modular switches are rock solid though). The BDs drop cards like nobody's buisness. Force10 makes some SUPER dense, fast boxes. We have about 8 of the e1200 series and for the most part they are fully loaded and pretty stable. No real multicast support on the force10s and certain things are missing like port mirroring and ipv6 (on the roadmap). If I'm not mistaken, none of them really have power over ethernet other than cisco and extreme, adn the extreme solution had some caveat that I can't remember.
This is a loaded question. The solution really depends on the application, not the budget (although it's always a factor!)

nb

----------------------------------------
Nicholas D. Buraglio

http://www.buraglio.com/nick/gpg-pub-key.txt