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Thread: Cisco Equipment

  1. #1

    Cisco Equipment

    Hello,

    I am in the process of setting up in a colo facility and need to make a decision on cisco hardware. I already have cisco catalyst 2900 switches, but am not sure exactly what router I need. The 6509 seems to be recommended in wht, but I want to be sure that I get exactly what is needed for my situation before making this large of a purchase.

    To start off with, I will have 100mb ds3 with around 60-80 servers. Within a year, I see that expanding to 5-6 of these ds3 lines and eventually move to gig-e. I will only have one provider to begin with, but will probably get more very soon, so bgp will be necessary.

    The biggest thing is making sure I get something that can deal with our growth. If anyone can give me an idea of exactly what would be the best, it would be greatly appreciated.

  2. #2
    I'd be more interested as to where I can get some 100meg DS-3s
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  3. #3
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    To be honest, I think you'd be best placed hiring a network consultant, because from your post, it seems like you're not sure on the basics even. Please don't take offence at this.
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  4. #4
    Pass me a 100Mbps DS3 info please. :-p

    Like was said above if you plan on pushing 500Mbps eventually it would be better to consult a network consultant.

  5. #5
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    I'll take 4 100mb DS3's at the DS3 pricing..

    Seriously though...Hire a network engineer because your a long way to understanding the interworkings of internetworks.

  6. #6
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    I hear al gore is a good source for interweb information.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by WireSix
    I hear al gore is a good source for interweb information.
    You can find him in my basement, he's working on the series of pipes and tubes that make up the internets (and carry the .xxx TLD brown content off to the webalizer clusterizer).

    Just remember kids, the internets is not a dump truck, its a series of tubes.
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  8. #8
    Haha, i'm glad i'm not the only person confused with the "100mb DS3" statement. I thought maybe I was missing something.....

  9. #9
    Sorry I meant 100mbit fast e.

  10. #10
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    Do you plan on running bgp? or just running a static rotue and trunking all the 100mb FE's? Why do you need so many 100Mb FastE's? why don't you just get a gigE right off the bat. Most isps will give you a gigE hand off on commits over 60Mbps.

    Then are you going to be multihomed? I hear good things about the 3550's, or you got spree for a 6500 depending on your needs, a sup2u card and away you go. or the 3550's can stack i believe.

    You should talk to a network engineer and let them map out a setup based on what you have connection wise and what you would like to do with your side of the network.
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  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Spudstr
    or the 3550's can stack i believe.
    If you value your sanity, you should avoid the GigaStack GBICs at all costs. The failure rate was abysmal and they made the switch do really interesting things like go from BLOCK to FORWARD for spanning tree while continuing to filter BPDUs. (Loop, crash, reload in an endless cycle) We should have taken the hint when our Cisco rep was hesitant to even let us order them...
    Eric Spaeth
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  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by Spudstr
    or you got spree for a 6500 depending on your needs, a sup2u card and away you go.
    Anything below Sup720 with 3BXL is going to be hitting its TCAM limit (240k entries off the top of my head) before all that much longer though AFAIK, especially in a border router scenario as that 240k entry limit is for calculated best IGP and EGP paths as well as ARP entries and a few other items.
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  13. #13
    Thanks for the input guys. Price isn't that big of an issue for the router, so 6500 or above is within my range. The main thing is getting something that can handle a transition from 1 fast e to several to gig e to several and 1 provider to multiple. We are starting out with the fast e since the facility we are in does not offer something like a 60mbit commit on the gig e and pricing is much higher per mbit until we get to something like 5-600 mbit. We'll have several consultants working with us on the network once we get this thing rolling. I'm just trying to get some budgeting done for this router while we are in the planning stage. Thanks again.

  14. #14
    You need two 6509's and a bunch of 3750's. They are all capable of doing MST, which will cut down the reconverge time of spanning-tree from the legacy 30second to less than 1 second. This would give you high performance and redundancy.

  15. #15
    of course the edge swithes (3750) need to have two fiber connections: one to each 6509.

  16. #16
    avoid the cisco 2900 series switches. They are likely to cause issues.

  17. #17
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    I think you are confusing multiple spanning-tree (per-vlan spanning tree in Cisco-speak) and 802.1w rapid spanning-tree. 802.1w speeds up the listen-learn-forward cycle by assuming edge port topology on non-trunks. In any case, you're leaving out that spanning tree is an evil legacy protocol that should never be used unless you are FORCED into a position to deploy it. (and even then you should re-evaluate your alternatives)

    Also, if you're going to recommend 3750s, you should at least suggest using them for one of their key features which is layer3 routing. With the 6509 / 3750 equipment combination there is no valid reason to introduce layer2 loops requiring the use of spanning tree.
    Eric Spaeth
    Enterprise Network Engineer :: Hosting Hobbyist :: Master of Procrastination
    "The really cool thing about facts is they remain true regardless of who states them."

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