[c-nsp] Removing VTP Server switch

[Gert Doering]

Hi,

On Tue, Nov 06, 2007 at 05:06:28PM +0530, Raja Subramanian wrote:
> This thread has got me thinking twice about my setup.  What do you guys
> recommend as an alternate to VTP?

"no VTP" - for a dozen switches, you should get by with manually configuring
VLANs on those switches where you need them.

Experience shows that typical deployments typically look like this:

 - VLANs span (nearly) all switches, but very rarely new ones get added
   (so doing it manually is tedious, but happens infrequently enough to
   still be workable)

 - VLANs are used for L3 termination of individual customers, over a L2
   switch towards a L3 routing device - and in those cases, the VLANs often
   span only a few switches, so can be rolled out "as needed"  (or follow
   a strict numbering convention, so can be rolled out when the switch is
   configured initially, and then do not need to be changed)

Our network has VLANs of both types, spread over about 50 switches - but
most VLANs only touch 1-2 switches, so the management effort is still OK.

(And yes, we had VTP before, and got bitten by it, so we now turn it off
wherever we come across it - it would be nice, but given that not all
devices can do VTP3, the need for VLANs over 1024, plus the mixture of 
switches that can only handle 64 VLANs with other switches that have 
well over 500 VLANs means "VTP won't work for us anyway")

gert
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Gert Doering - Munich, Germany                             gert at greenie.muc.de
fax: +49-89-35655025                        gert at net.informatik.tu-muenchen.de