[c-nsp] advice for L2 switches

[Jason LeBlanc]

I second a pair of used 6500 chassis with used sup1a/msfc(1) and cheap 
used 6348 blades.  Were you near someone who keeps spares you could 
probably borrow or rent a lot of it, much easier to setup with just 2 
chassis than 40 or so smaller switches.  I'm betting you could get it 
all on the gray market for $10k or less.  We still use these in 
production with no ill effects where 720 horsepower is not needed, so it 
might not be wasted money in the end.

This may be a dumb question, but why not wifi?  If its laptops, most 
will have the adapter built in, and a few usb adapters on the cheap for 
the rest, and a few ethernet ports for those that really need copper.

Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Jun 2007, Kevin Blackham wrote:
>
>   
>> We're promoting a one day event that requires around 500 FE access ports.  I
>> need to filter at layer 4 (block DHCP serving) and perform some QoS duties
>>     
>
> Sounds like a classical lan-party setup. I've done this but with 4500 
> ports.
>
> People do this with cheap switches from dlink, zyxel, linksys etc.
>
> Centrally placed cisco 6500 (borrowed or rented) or equivalent with a lot 
> of copper ports, single CAT5 from that to whereever fan-out is needed and 
> place cheap 24 port switch there. Do management on one vlan, do /26 for 
> the participants on another. Don't bother with DHCP protection and other 
> stuff in the fanout switches, they'll only break the other 23 participants 
> and it's fairly easy to faultfind.
>
> So, in short, get cheap simple fan-out switch, do intelligence 
> centrally.
>
>