L3 not hard now but will in the future. That's why I have to be careful what I budget for. Cause once I get the money, I sure as heck can't go back to them a few years down the road and say I need more money because the switch I bought isn't up to the job because of network expansion, etc.
Paul Chinnery Network Administrator Memorial Medical Center 231-845-2319 -----Original Message----- From: Ben Scott [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, November 14, 2008 10:23 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Network core switch On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 1:09 PM, Chinnery, Paul <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I wanted to ask the group for their opinions regarding other company's products ... > 95% of all network traffic passes through this switch which is a layer > 3, btw. 48 gig ports, 6 or so gbics and the balance will be 100 meg. Are you hitting the layer three features hard, or are you really just using it as an expensive layer two switch? I'm a big fan of HP's ProCurve stuff for layer two switching. It's cheaper than Cisco by far. They include technical support, warranty coverage, and firmware updates "forever"[1] in the base purchase price. As opposed to Cisco, where they won't even talk to you without a SMARTnet contract, and the firmware license is invalid for used equipment. The plague of horrible support which has infected HP's printer division doesn't seem to be affecting the ProCurve division, for whatever reason. I can't speak to HP's layer three performance. My impression is that they have layer 3 features, but it probably doesn't do everything you can do with a Cisco. Hence my question above: Do you *need* to do everything a Cisco can do? If so, by all means, buy a Cisco. But if you don't need it, why pay for it? [1] Obviously, nothing is "forever", but HP is still is issuing occasional firmware updates for stuff from the 90's. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
