[nsp] Re: another counter funny

[Joel Snyder]

>>How about Extreme Summit? Never used them but the spec looks right.

We have largely replaced our Cisco gear with Extreme products at the 
switch level.  Summit 48s have 48 10/100 ports and 2 dual-GigE ports and 
can be had with a bit of patience for the $350 to $500 range.  They go 
wire speed on all ports and sit in 2U of space.  In terms of raw 
performance, they're very dependable.  We've probably got 60 'switch 
years' without a single failure from the production units.

Several of them are running L3 routing, specifically OSPF, for the 
inside of the network.  It's not as nice to debug as the Cisco IOS gear, 
by far, and the configuration isn't as sophisticated either.  But in our 
switch room, frankly, the OSPF fabric isn't that complicated.  Three 
areas, a dozen or so cooperating routers, this is not rocket science.

The place where the Summit 48s specifically are fragile is power surges. 
  When a port blows, and they can blow with a relatively low "spark" 
compared to other gear, it takes out that port and the rest of the 
'block of four' that it's in.  We have some Summits in the lab which are 
not production but get a bit of lightning punch every year or so and 
it's not unusual to lose a port.  Those on conditioned power have no 
problem.  I suspect that newer Extreme gear, like the 48i units, don't 
have this problem because Extreme knows about it and is embarrassed 
about it.  The Summit 48 is an old box, circa the 29xx/2950 era.

The nice thing about the Summits is that they don't leak packets.  Every 
Cisco switch I've ever tested with VLAN capabilities has leaked from 
"some" to "a lot" of packets.  When the Ciscos fail, they fail into 'hub 
mode,' which means that you generally don't notice it until they start 
behaving correctly, but they seem to leak packets a lot.  I have never 
actually seen a Summit leak packets across VLANs.

We also use the HP gear.  There was a time when the 4000/8000 series was 
very competitively priced and so we bought a lot of that---great density 
and performance.  The newer stuff in that same form factor (48 to 96 
ports) seems to be very nice, but for whatever reason I've been going 
Extreme Summit 48.  I suspect largely based on price, since some of the 
advanced features that HP has (802.1X comes to mind) that aren't 
available on the older Summit 48 aren't worth the extra bucks.

jms

-- 
Joel M Snyder, 1404 East Lind Road, Tucson, AZ, 85719
Phone: +1 520 324 0494 (voice)  +1 520 324 0495 (FAX)
jms at Opus1.COM    http://www.opus1.com/jms    Opus One