[nsp] Layer 2/3 Switch recommendation

[Gert Doering]

Hi,

On Fri, Jun 25, 2004 at 09:55:36AM +0000, Kristofer Sigurdsson wrote:
> > I recently purchased 2 Cisco Catalyst 3750's which are stacked together.
> > their primary purpose being to switch and monitor the heart of my network.
> > 
> > I mistakenly thought they would support Netflow. and apparently they don't.
> > 
> > Can someone recommend a Catalyst model which does support Netflow correctly?
> 
> I don't think you get then in any lower models than 5500.  I have no personal
> expirience from those, but I've heard they're a pain in the backside.

The 5500s are *really* nice switches.  Really.

They are no "extremely high speed monsters" like the 6500s, of course,
but for your average small ISP hosting center where you need a high number
of ports, but the total bandwidth will be small (due to "upstream
bandwidth only STM-1" or similar) they are really really good, and they
are *rock solid* - uptimes of 800 days and more *with no problems* are not 
uncommon.

<rant>
The only thing that's a PITA is Cisco's product policy - no 12.2 for the
C5 RSFC (thus no 64 bit counters) and no 12.2T for RSM or RSFC (thus no
IPv6 for that platform).  No CatOS 7.x support either (thus no rapid STP).
It's unlikely that there is any technical reason, this is purely "if we 
drop support for that box, customers will go and give us more money for 
a new box".
</rant>

gert
-- 
USENET is *not* the non-clickable part of WWW!
                                                           //www.muc.de/~gert/
Gert Doering - Munich, Germany                             gert at greenie.muc.de
fax: +49-89-35655025                        gert at net.informatik.tu-muenchen.de