[cisco-voip] Redundancy to the endpoint

[Mike Armstrong]

Cisco's campus model stops being redundant at the access layer switch, which 
(according to cisco) should have high port density.  When one of those 
fails, devices connected to those dense ports go dark if they're only 
connected to one switch.  We had a 3750-PoE-48 go down last Friday, and 48 
phones are now blank.  Cisco initially said they didn't have another one to 
send us until July 21, but I persuaded them to send a 3560 as a temporary 
replacement, so with a minor configuration change we should be back in 
business later today.  Nevertheless, losing 48 phones is still a big deal 
for us, and even if we had the money to support a fully-redundant switch, 
there's still a significant outage while the fault is detected and the patch 
cables are swapped.  I wonder what other folks do in anticipation of a 
high-port-density switch failing, and if there's a likelihood of improved 
redundancy at this level in the future?

Mike Armstrong
UF/IFAS CREC
Lake Alfred, FL