[Techtalk] Re: Somewhat OT: Fiberoptic networking HOWTO?

[Raven Alder]

Heya --

Quoth Robert White (Mon, Apr 12, 2004 at 12:58:43PM -0400):
> > 	As per switches, I've had good luck with Alteons and with
> > Extremes.
> 
> Ugh! Having had to support Extreme switches for the last year, I am not a
> big fan. The shelf life for its backplane is something like 9 months, and
> we've replaced the fan trays on all of our Alpine's at least once, and
> several twice. Their hardware diagnostics are so bad that until the most
> recent version of code, there wasn't much to troubleshoot. We just replaced
> the SMMI or blade that was spewing errors.

	Wow, ick, thanks for posting.  This is why hearing multiple
reports is a good thing... just because my experience with the Extremes
was good doesn't mean that everyone's was.  We didn't use them as layer
3 devices as you did (I'm semi dogmatic about "switches are for
switching, routers are for routing", though the boundaries between
routers and switches continue to blur).  That probably does have a big
effect on performance and one's experience.

Cheers,
Raven