[K12OSN] Netgear GS748T switch

[Terrell Prudé, Jr.]

On Tue, 2005-10-04 at 19:31 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:

> On Tue, 2005-10-04 at 17:53, Terrell Prudé, Jr. wrote:
> 
> > If you choose to go with this switch, also make sure, before you do,
> > that it *fully* supports GVRP.  This is a protocol that allows the
> > propagation of VLAN information across multiple switches; think of it
> > as the open version of Cisco's proprietary VTP.  If you don't have
> > either GVRP or VTP, then you're looking at manually configuring VLANs
> > across all your switching architecture.  Since all of my schools run
> > multiple VLANs with at least ten switches per school (our secondary
> > schools now have over 100 switches!), not having this feature is a
> > major problem for us.  That's the chief reason we went with Cisco
> > instead of Amer.com; a year ago, we actually were considering the
> > latter.  However, if you're dealing with just three to five switches,
> > then it may not be an issue.
> 
> 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?  :-)  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.  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.

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.

--TP
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