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Date:      Tue, 21 Dec 1999 19:40:59 -0500
From:      Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu>
To:        Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Cool little 100BaseTX switch - they're coming down in price
Message-ID:  <v04210105b485c93d9930@[128.113.24.47]>
In-Reply-To: <385F2FFD.CA594829@softweyr.com>
References:  <199912190410.UAA01049@apollo.backplane.com>	 <385C789C.DD290597@softweyr.com> <v04210104b484a826ab4b@[128.113.24.47]> <385F2FFD.CA594829@softweyr.com>

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At 12:45 AM -0700 12/21/99, Wes Peters wrote:
>Garance A Drosihn wrote:
> > [...] but I was wondering how much one has to fork out before you
> > get extra options like a port-mirroring capability...
>
>Lots more, in terms of dollars.  For this, you need at least a managed
>switch, and probably a smart switch.  I know for a fact this one, [...]

>For more info about both, see:
>
>http://www.ind.alcatel.com/enterprise/products/omnistack/ost04.html
>
>Note that these are "Layer 3" switches with VLAN support, IP and IPX routing,
>etc.  The per-port prices aren't that different than the simpler managed
>switches, but the port count tends to be high.

Thanks for all the replies.  I should have mentioned that I'm thinking of
this as an "office switch".  I have a 10baseT connection coming into my
office (you might ask "why?"-- I know I do!), but several machines in
here which can do 100baseT.  I figured that with a switch I can at least
get faster connections between my own machines, and keep all my intra-office
traffic off the 10baseT leg at the same time.

The upshot of this is that the 80-port options that some people have
mentioned are probably a bit overkill for my office...   :-)

>Caveat: I work on these things daily.  Consider whatever I say about them
>to be evangelism.  Also note that turning on software-dependent features
>like port mirroring can do terrible things to your throughput if not used
>judiciously.

My idea was to take the 10baseT connection coming into my office (the
other end of which is on a hub, not a switch...), and mirror it to a
port on a machine which isn't used for much.  That way I could use
that machine to do tcpdump's of the traffic on the 10baseT subnet,
even though all the traffic between office machines will be on the
switch.  Sounds like I'd be better off financially to have a simple
10baseT hub, and plug both an unmanaged switch and my spare machine
into that hub.

But if I were to go with a managed switch, what is it that you're
warning me about?  If I mirror all the 10baseT traffic on the port
for my spare machine, will that effect the throughput to just my
spare machine (which is fine by me), or will it also slow down
throughput between machines on other ports of the switch?

Pardon the tangents, but I'm just curious...


---
Garance Alistair Drosehn           =   gad@eclipse.acs.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer          or  drosih@rpi.edu
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute


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