[c-nsp] Catalyst 3750 stacks with many members

[Ross Vandegrift]

On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 12:30:44PM +0900, Ian Henderson wrote:
> Also, the stacking cables seem very fragile - even if they are
> screwed in properly, a bump can cause the stack to go haywire.

This is very true.  The connectors that Cisco uses for the backplane
interconnection are unusually fragile.  We only have two switch
3750 stacks and they work great when the stacking cables work.

The one foot cables that come with the switches are great.  They are
short and light enough that the crappy connectors don't cause a
problem.

However, I've had at least four pairs of the three meter cables for
switches located in adjacent racks.  Of those four, only one pair ever
worked correctly.

On the other hand, Juniper's EX-4200 is awesome.  The cables use
PCI-Express connectors that are far sturdier than Cisco's proprietary
connectors.  We've using them in production, have hot-extended the
chassis, and tested stacking cable failure.  Works great.

We're only using them for ethernet layer 2 - no layer 3 or MPLS.  Lots
of 802.3ad aggregation groups and some crazy MSTP mappings.


-- 
Ross Vandegrift
ross at kallisti.us

"If the fight gets hot, the songs get hotter.  If the going gets tough,
the songs get tougher."
	--Woody Guthrie