[K12OSN] Netgear GS748T switch

[Les Mikesell]

On Wed, 2005-10-05 at 06:52, Terrell Prudé, Jr. wrote:

> > I'll telnet to 100 switches and paste in your list of vlans for
> > a lot less than the Cisco switches cost. Unless you change them
> > all the time you've saved a couple of minutes per switch. In fact
> > I do it that way even on Ciscos because I've always been afraid
> > that someone would put a switch from the lab on the main net and
> > it would decide to become the master and tell the others about the
> > wrong vlans.
> > 
> 
> If you're talking about one site, then that may work.  But do you have
> the time to do it for 241 sites (average 30 switches each), along with
> all your other duties?  :-) 

I'm talking about devices on a network, which makes the
locations irrelevant.  I have switches and routers in
London, Sydney, and Tokyo that are managed the same as
the ones in my own building.  Of course the routers
have tunnels so I can reach the private addresses behind
them.

>  Also, that assumes that your Cisco alternative actually supports
> telnetting or SSH'ing in.  I may be wrong, but it doesn't look like
> those Netgears support a command-line interface, though the Amer.com
> switches do.

Even a web interface is fair game for scripting.  But a
few hundred devices aren't a problem to do by hand.  I
like to tftp back each config anyway and keep it under
CVS so I can track changes and can tftp an exact copy
into a replacement device. Oddly, the VLAN database doesn't
come along as part of the normal config on Ciscos.  It's
a few minutes work per device.  How much are you paying
to avoid that?

More than a few hundred and it becomes worth scripting.
Kermit or expect will work over telnet and perl has some
web automation modules.

>   No, I must still maintain that GVRP or something equivalent is
> really a *major* help when you're managing a larger network.  Also,
> since we're adding capabilities to our networks every year (security
> systems, secured wireless, etc.), we do add VLANs regularly.  We're
> doing it right now, actually.

Mostly all you have to do is pick some reasonable number of
vlans and add them to all the switches ahead of time so they
are carried on the trunk ports.  This doesn't happen by
default because the switch has to do spanning-tree on each
vlan but a dozen or so spares that you added ahead of time
won't hurt anything.

> That said, I agree that Cisco switches are horridly expensive, which
> is why we were considering an alternative (are you listening, Mark
> Wilhelm? :-) ).  If Amer.com had supported GVRP, then we'd have been
> all over it.  But our network is just too big to do it all manually
> like that.

I have several Dell gig switches and they claim to support
everything, although the places I'm using them don't need any
of the features so I can't say if they actually work.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   les at futuresource.com