[c-nsp] Some advice on switches....

[Jeff Kell]

Geoffrey Pendery wrote:
> You might want to look at 4500 Series switches, rather than 6500.
> If 2960's were sufficient for your requirements (no advanced routing,
> Netflow, NBAR, etc) then 4500 is closer to an apples-to-apples
> comparison than 6500.
> 4500 will generally be cheaper than 6500, especially when taking
> maintenance/Smartnet into account (though YMMV).

One caveat with 4500s, be mindful of your bandwidth limitations.

For a classic non-E chassis and/or traditional supervisor blade (Sup-IV
or less), you're dealing with a 6Gbps/slot backplane limitation.  You
may be OK with your 10/100 blades, but some of the classic 10/100/1000
ones such as the WS-X4448 you are as much as 8:1 oversubscribed onto
that 6Gbps/slot.  The 2960 backplane is smoking hot in comparison (but
you're still limited in uplink b/w).

The E-series chassis with a hot supervisor will get you 24Gbps/slot.

Jeff