[K12OSN] switch advice: Netgear or 3com

[Les Mikesell]

On Mon, 2004-09-27 at 21:18, "Terrell Prudé, Jr." wrote:

> I agree, if you're referring to phone support.  Catalyst 35x0 IOS is, 
> though, free as in beer to download from their WWW site.

Unless they have changed things recently, access to the IOS images
requires a login, and registering for the login requires a smartnet
contract.  Netgear, on the other hand actually has open
downloads, and I didn't notice anything that would have stopped
me from downloading to a Linux box.


> If Cisco were to then turn around and say, "OK, 
> *on top of what we've already agreed to with your SMARTnet*, you've got 
> to pay yet extra for us to talk to you if you've got Macs on our 
> switches", then this would be equivalent to what Norbert is experiencing 
> with Netgear.  Fortunately, Cisco didn't do that.  :-)

I thought he said it was a firmware issue.  I take firmware updates
as a necessary evil even from the best of vendors and just assume
that anything I buy is going to need it.  These days most can be
done from a Linux box although the vendor may not know that or
be able to tell you how.

---
   Les Mikesell
    les at futuresource.com