Invisible wrote:
> OK, so the company I work for is moving to a new building.

Finally. That's one thing you've been waiting for ;).

> As part of the move, I thought it would be nice to buy some new gigabit

> brand you buy. But when HQ got wind of this, they said "oh no, you must
> buy these Cisco switches, that way they'll match what everybody else has".

Yes. Keep the line clear, and the network will be easier to maintain.




Yes. Cisco has a price. Cisco also has IOS, functionality, support,
quality and reputation. Practically Cisco is always a safe choice, when
it comes to network devices.

> Well anyway, HQ bought the switches themselves. I got an email the other
> day to say they've finished configuring them now. (It's a switch? What's
> to configure? It's a passive component...) They're about to ship them over.

No, it's not a passive component. Even the stupidest switches have some
intelligence and do active job. Manageable switches do much more and
routing switches (like the ones you'll get) are 'bout blessing for
network infrastructures.

> Yesterday I got a document describing the configuration of the switches.
> And now it all becomes horribly clear.
> 
> These "switches" are actually *routers*. That's why they're so damn
> expensive - each one is a 24-port *router*!!

They are freaking reliable routing switches with world-reputation
support. Yes, that costs money.

> Um... we don't *need* routers. We have 1 subnet. We just need some
> ordinary switches. Oh well...
> 
> But wait! Looking at the configuration details, it seems HQ want to
> split my network into several seperate subnets, and have configured the
> routers to route between them.

Because you can :).

> Er... why?? This isn't necessary. All this does is massively increase
> the complexity of my network. For no gain. Why are you going this?? (And
> why is today the first I've heard of this?)

It makes the network more controllable and logical (or to be precise, it
makes getting the network more controllable and logical possible). And
it increases security, if made correctly.

> *sigh* Clearly I'm going to have to make some phone calls... :-(
> 
> [Seriously. Do these people just enjoy making things complicated for the
> fun of it? Are they trying to prove how cleaver they are or something?
> Perhaps this is job security? I don't know, but where I'm from, it's
> usual to go with the *simplest* solution that does what you want, not
> the most complicated one...]

They are making theier job (and yours too) more stable. It's a bit more
work to configure the system and some work to maintain it, but it
reduces big problems.

And yes, I'd love to get Catalyst to be the base of my homenet. But
because of the price I'll probably have to just get 1800-series Procurve.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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