[c-nsp] Small Catalysts, small buffers, drop "preference" ?

[Jeff Kell]

We have a fairly extensive access layer of smaller and mostly older
Catalysts (2950s, 2960s) with building distribution 3550s/3560s as
uplinks.  We did some overhauls over the summer to get not only gig
uplinks to the buildings, but gig uplinks to each access layer switch
within the building.  Most of the access switches are just 10/100 ports,
so some oversubscription is expected.

We are seeing a mix of "input drops" on the uplink ports (all shared
buffers in use?) as well as "output drops" on the slower access ports
(port exceeded its quota of the shared buffers?).  Some loss is of
course expected due to the oversubscription, just trying to get a handle
on which direction I should be more concerned about losing (input or
output?).  Trying to avoid QoS/CoS for now (no VoIP or similar mess to
deal with yet).

I know there's no elegant do-all, fix-all solution, just looking for
some general guidelines over what the "next step" might entail.

Jeff