Orchid XP v8 a écrit :
> Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> 
>> I feel like maybe I am over explaining the joke of "Layer 3 devices are
>> rarely layer 2 devices anymore."
> 
> I remember when we moved to the new building at work. I was just going 
> to pay maybe £300 for some new network switches. But no, the Director of 
> IT insisted that we had to buy Cisco switches, which are £1,500 each.
> 

As I mentioned to you at the time, the IT Director might have had very 
good reasons for going with Cisco gear.  (One of which may or may not be 
that they took him on a good golf outing!)

What kind of troubleshooitng facilities exist for your £300 switches? 
What's their MTBF?  Can they survive a broadcast storm?  Can they 
PREVENT a broadcast storm?

> As soon as we started setting them up, I quickly realised that they 
> aren't switches at all. They're routers. You can filter traffic, route 
> between different network numbers and God only knows what else.

See?  That's probably because the director of IT wanted to use some of 
these features.

> (Not, of 
> course, that *I* have access to do any of this. I'm only the person in 
> charge of the network, right?)
> 

Most companies will not grant more than read-only access to their onsite 
tech, if any access at all.  As you mention, these switches can do much 
more than just local switching between ports.  Untrained people have 
been known to mess with stuff they didn't fully understand and cause 
network-wide outages.  (Trained people too!)

I'm not suggesting you're a cowboy who does any of this, but if you're 
interested in helping out your network folks (who are in the US, IIRC) 
Cisco offers courses.  I'd suggest bringing that up with your manager 
and explain that this way, you'd be able to provide faster help when a 
problem arises and the boys from the Mothership are still asleep.

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