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Re: Any 1U - 2U Ethernet switches that can handle 4K VLANs?

  • From: Alexei Roudnev
  • Date: Mon Jan 26 03:53:07 2004 
3550 runs IOS. That's an answer. I never allow any non-IOS router in
production environment (except high end devices, such as Juniper, when
benefits are very high). And 3550 is not expansive (yes, it is not cheap).

PS. How much ethernet ports do you have in the office? Do you have 100 K
ports? If not, why do you need 128K MAC's? (I know only one case, when I
need so much - some kind of DSL service...

In most cases, you have 500 - 5,000 ports in one building. If you have more,
it is unlikely that you use 3550 switches. So, it is enough for the tasks
(just as performance - it have _enough_ performance). Btw, I believed that
catalist swithes have not any limitations for the MAC tables (because they
use memory _on demand_); where did you get this limitations? /I may be wrong
here/

PPS. I do not know for sure, but 3550 should support traffic shaping, which
makes bufferring. Technically, yes, CEF (with packet dropping) is not good
to provide 2 Mbit by 100 Mbit link.

>
> On Sun, 25 Jan 2004, Alexei Roudnev wrote:
>
> > Of course, if they want L3 routing on every box (I do not like such
idea,
> > but it's possible), then 3550 (or what do they have now?) is the best
> > choice.
>
> Definately not. The 3550 is an overpriced outdated product with moderate
> performance with way too small table sizes. For instance:
>
> The Summit48si handles 128k MAC addresses. The 3550 handles something like
> 6-15k.
>
> The Summit48si can do buffering when doing QoS/shaping, the 3550 does only
> policing. If you want to deliver a 2meg service over ethernet to a
> customer, this is a big issue.
>
> There is only one product in the 3550 line that is pricewise worth getting
> is the 3550-12G if you need to do L2 gig aggregation to 1gig uplink and
> you do not have many VLANs.
>
> There are three issues I see where the 3550 actually has a selling point:
>
> VRFs (even though they are too few)
> Q-in-Q (limited by the small mac table size)
> CEF (if you have very small routing table size and no broadcasts)
>
> -- 
> Mikael Abrahamsson    email: [email protected]
>