[c-nsp] 3550 Switches

[Mike Sawicki]

On Thu, Aug 05, 2004 at 01:55:38PM -0400, Dan Armstrong wrote:
> We have had excellent luck with 3550 switches.  We use them with the EMI image 
> on the edge of our network to attach customers, and use OSPF to advertise 
> routes anchored on them up to 2 6509s in the distribution layer.  
> 
> They seem to be able to take quite a beating in terms of traffic and not fall 
> over.... We don't throw a lot of routes at them, they are all in a series of 
> NSSA areas - so we are not pushing them that hard, but we have had a few 
> badly infected 100meg customers flatten routers further upstream while the 
> 3550 kept on sailing just fine...
> 
> Yes you need the EMI version to do OSPF.
> 

Just to throw in my experience.  The 3550 with enhanced image *is* a
very good product from Cisco.  The price is right, and the perform
like champs.  I'd be a little leery of the 3750 right now though..
have had some reliability issues with the 2 or 3 we have in service.
I figured since they are the next generation they'd be even faster..
but they seem to fall over themselves, especially when placed into
an l2/l3 role.  Some of our newer applications require 1000base
copper.. so the 3750 series was my only option given my budget.

I'm thinking the 3750 may stabilize as the product matures and new
code is released.  I've been using the series since about the first
month or so of release.. and been through all kinds of bugs, my
favorite being the "acl applied to a vty is ignored bug".  :)

3550's are champ edge switches.  We had an event that pushed
somewhere on the order of 800mbit/s out to the world with a 3550-12G
acting as an l2 distribution/l3 border router role.  The servers
plugged into 3550-48's trunked back to the 12G.

Mike Sawicki (fifi at HAX.ORG)