Cisco 2900 XL

[Red Squirrel]

How does this switch compare to the 2950 series? Someone is selling one locally for 100 bucks, normally a cisco switch goes for over a grand, so I'm thinking of buying it just because I've always wanted a cisco product to mess around with at home, and put it into production. I'd rather a router, but a switch will do. I'm just not sure what features this switch does not have, that the 2950s have.

 

[futuristicmonkey]

You'll want to check the specs online first....second-hand experience tells me the 2900XL are very underpowered compared to, say, a 2950.

 

[nweaver]

2900's aren't too bad. They will do VLAN's and dot1q trunks.


They don't sell for a grand though. Depending on proof of ownership (for warranty status) and code, it could be a decend deal at $100 though

 

[Cooky]

As far as I know, the only thing that the 2900XL can do but the 2950 can't is ISL trunking.

Generally speaking, the 2900/3500XL series runs a weird version of IOS, which doesn't support all the commands that you use in today's network.
However, if all you want is to play around for future cert or professional skill, a 2900XL will do.

You can also check out the ones on eBay.

 

[dphantom]

I used a 2900 XL to help with my CCNA. Works fine and for basic networking should be fine. As oterhs said, look to e-Bay for your best price.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Thanks for the input everyone.

 

[spidey07]

If you want the truth - the switch sucks.

If you want it to learn - it's fine. I wouldn't put one on a live network.

 

[dphantom]

Originally posted by: spidey07
If you want the truth - the switch sucks.

If you want it to learn - it's fine. I wouldn't put one on a live network.

Well, it's not that bad. 😉

All I could afford for a network at one time and worked "ok" for basic networking. But we outgrew them pretty quickly and moved up to 3550 later. More a budgeting game I had to play to get funding for somewhat minimally decent networking equipment then I could a few years later switch to better stuff.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: dphantom

Originally posted by: spidey07
If you want the truth - the switch sucks.

If you want it to learn - it's fine. I wouldn't put one on a live network.

Well, it's not that bad. 😉

All I could afford for a network at one time and worked "ok" for basic networking. But we outgrew them pretty quickly and moved up to 3550 later. More a budgeting game I had to play to get funding for somewhat minimally decent networking equipment then I could a few years later switch to better stuff.

I can see that. But even with hard core cisco supporters like me, the 2900/3500 XL line leaves a bad taste (they suck at everything an access switch is supposed to do). Even internally they are considered the "bastard children" of their switch line.

The XL line is 8 years old and was end of sale pretty FAST. End of any support whatsoever on them will expire this year I believe.

 

[dphantom]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: dphantom

Originally posted by: spidey07
If you want the truth - the switch sucks.

If you want it to learn - it's fine. I wouldn't put one on a live network.

Well, it's not that bad. 😉

All I could afford for a network at one time and worked "ok" for basic networking. But we outgrew them pretty quickly and moved up to 3550 later. More a budgeting game I had to play to get funding for somewhat minimally decent networking equipment then I could a few years later switch to better stuff.

I can see that. But even with hard core cisco supporters like me, the 2900/3500 XL line leaves a bad taste (they suck at everything an access switch is supposed to do). Even internally they are considered the "bastard children" of their switch line.

The XL line is 8 years old and was end of sale pretty FAST. End of any support whatsoever on them will expire this year I believe.

No disagreement from me. And I was surprised by how fast Cisco end of lifed that class of switches.

Similar to some 1750 routers (not 1751's) I had to use for a VoIP project (shudder). Ended up finally replacing them with 28xx ISR's using same method.

 

[Cooky]

This is off-topic, but may I ask what problem you ran into w/ the 1750's?
We're having some VoIP problems where two sites are trying to talk to each other via a frame between two 1750's.

 

[cmetz]

Cooky, the 1700 platform was very short lived, and they hardly got it working before redesigning everything for the ISR platform. That left it pretty much as a bastard product. I think that with the ISR product line, they have basically no motivation to finish fixing the 1700 platform specific stuff - I do hear a lot of answers of the form "upgrade to an ISR."

 

[dphantom]

Originally posted by: Cooky
This is off-topic, but may I ask what problem you ran into w/ the 1750's?
We're having some VoIP problems where two sites are trying to talk to each other via a frame between two 1750's.

Not so much problems but limitations. The original 1750 didn't support sub interfaces subsequently fixed in the 1751. Hence, a VoIP install ran on the same vlan as the data so potential QoS and Class of service issues.

This was when Cisco was just getting into voice and realized the limitations of the 1750 series pretty quickly. As smetz said, they end of lifed that pretty quick.

Also, SRST was not supported originally on the 1750s. They did release an IOS that did support SRSt later, but again, a lack of support for voice implementations.

 

[nweaver]

we run 2900XL's all over, they work fine for distribution layer (we normally don't do anything fancy witht them, factory defaults, and ocasionally an IP and SNMP for b/w monitoring). They all cable into our 6500, which in turn hits our edge router which is a 7500