[c-nsp] Re: Catalyst Switch Upgrades

[Nassess, George]

>I am looking for a reasonable upgrade from the Cisco Catalyst 2924
switches
>we currently use.
>
>Primary we use the 2924's as a centralized switch in each POP, and thus
>employee the 802.1Q VLAN tagging, so this is a continued requirement.
We
>have multiple types of equipment connecting to these switches, and even
use
>them for router to router connectivity (such as a media converter). The
>switch must also have slots available for Gbic's as well..
>
>I am currently looking at the following models, and was curious if
anyone
>had any thoughts on them and their performance in the field:
>
>Catalyst 2950
>Catalyst 2960 
>
>Any thoughts/insight would greatly be appreciated!
>
>Thanks in advance!
>~karl

Our team went through this also to choose a new enterprise standards for
remote office switches. 

2960 were priced same as 2950, we have been advised this usually happens
before it goes EOS
AFAIK, from what we looked up and our Cisco SE told us, 2960
improvements are actually being made in a cisco facility rather than 3rd
party, new ASICs improve performance, and I was told (unconfirmed) that
it can police in smaller than 1Mb increments.

2950s have been pretty good for us, although FWIW, personally in our
isolated sample we have seen higher than normal failure rates. Hoping
cisco bringing the next gen in house will improve this. I am deploying
the first 6 2960s in about a week or two.