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CISCO SWITCH ??

A

azev

Golden Member
I know cisco is very popular and recomended by most of network professionals, but does anybody here ever heard of extreme networks?? I am thinking of getting cisco 3548 for my office or extreme networks summit 48 .... Anybody have any suggestion??

Thanks
 
I've heard of them, in fact I'm wearing one of their t-shirts right now. 🙂

They make pretty nice stuff. We're looking at some of their switches right now, kind of testing them out. I'm not personally involved in this project but I have looked over their product line. The nice thing about Extreme's line is that they offer high port density solutions and high bandwidth backplanes. This means that they use less precious rack space and that they're fast.

Nice stuff, funky colors.
 
Extreme makes nice gear. The big thing going for cisco is industry support. Specifically etherchannel. it is a very simple protocol that enable switches and NICS to balance traffic and failover in just a few milliseconds. This kind of load-balanced, instant failover mechanism works just great.

Also, look at what other kinds of network gear you have. Nothing worse than having a network with cisco routers, nortel and cisco and extreme and foundry switches, lucent VPNs et all, checkpoint firewall, and even different L4 switches. Makes support a living nightmare.

spidey
 
Good points spidey.

I wasn't real familiar with the Cisco switch you were referring to but it looks pretty nice. In fact, it will take less rack space than the Extreme Summit 48 you're considering (1U for the Cisco versus 2U for the Extreme).

It appears, granted in a quick read for the Cisco product, that the Extreme offers you layer 3 switching and routing features and the Cisco does not. So, if you don't know what that is, or you know you don't need it then go with the Cisco.

beXors: Yes. Purple with some bright green accents to be exact. Like this: Extreme Networks
 
I you want the best performance with the least amount of error, I would look at the Extreme Summit24 or 48 switches. They are arguably the best switches on the market. Of course, not to take anything from Cisco, the 3500 series is there better line of switches, unless you want to get a 6500 or 8500 series switch. The Extreme Network switches might be more expensive, but Spirent, formally NetCom Systems, recommends the Extreme Networks switches. They absolutely love those switches. In fact, Spirent uses the Extreme switches for comparing against other vendors switches for performance. The Extreme Networks switches have the least amount of packet lose, about next to 0%, and the best throughput per port.

And, Spidey, if you disagree with me I have a few contacts within Spirent you can contact.
 
Anybody knows a good site which review cisco or extreme networks switches, and where to buy one at a good deal??

Thanks
 
Shadow, I would like to see the test bed and results of the switch tests that you have specified. I am curious where they are even seeing loss, and would also like to see if they are comparing Blocking to non blocking fabric.
 
A couple of sites with reviews:
Tolly Group or Mier Testing

I'd have to agree that the Extreme switch is a higher quality product and includes Layer 3 switching. Cisco is the industry standard, but if it's performance you want look at the Extreme.
 
Is extreme a faster switch - YES. Does nortel and juniper make faster routers? - YES. Does that mean go out and buy an extreme switch and juniper routers? Well the answer to that is just like all networking...it depends.

Both are fine products. I have yet in my lifetime seen a network that can actually saturate a switch backplane. The L3 features of the extreme are quite nice (do you need that and are you willing to pay the premium?)

If you want raw power from cisco try the 2948 or 4000 series switches. Really it is not a fair comparison between the Exteme summit48 and a cisco 3548. A more accurate comparison would be between the Summit48 and Cisco 2948G-L3 (much more powerful switch and actually cheaper than the summit.

This is almost like the age old netware vs. microsoft argument 🙂 What OS is better in terms of what a NOS should do?---netware. Who receives more industry support and development?---microsoft. Which one is right for you?

hmmmm.....now...it depends doesn't it?
god I love networking WAY too much 😉
 
Spidey does the 3548 have a faster backplane then a 3524 someone was telling a friend of mine this but I dont belive it
 
No one's going to mention Foundry? If we're going to have a debate about switches then I'd like Foundry's stuff mentioned. Nice gear. A near complete copy of the Cisco CLI EXCEPT I can do a sh run while in config mode. Why on earth Cisco can't offer me that I have no idea.

Anyways, Foundry offers GBIC, as does Extreme, as does Cisco, but Foundry's offerings tend to offer more Gbit uplinks than their competitors.

You can slice a pie up many ways, but it still boils down to which one suits you best.

BTW, Extreme's stuff has HUGE backplane bandwidth. I say big whoop! So much so that in real life scenarios you'll never come close to using it.

<edit> Oops. Didn't notice that spidey had already noted the same thing as I did in my last comment. Sorry. </edit>
 
MACSCUCK:

copied from cisco product page. looks like the same backplane on all of them.

10.8 Gbps switching fabric

8.8 million packets-per-second forwarding rate (Catalyst 3548 XL)

7.5 million packets-per-second forwarding rate (Catalyst 3508G XL)

6.5 million packets-per-second forwarding rate (Catalyst 3524 XL)

4.8 million packets-per-second forwarding rate (Catalyst 3512 XL)

(All forwarding rates for 64-byte packets)

5.4 Gbps max forwarding bandwidth

4 MB shared-memory architecture shared by all ports

Packet forwarding rate for 64-byte packets: 14,880 PPS to 10 Mbps ports 148,800 PPS to 100BaseT ports 1,488,000 PPS to 1000BaseX ports

8192 Media Access Control (MAC) addresses

8 MB DRAM and 4 MB Flash memory onboard
 
the 3500 series is more of a desktop switch and not well suited for a server farm like the extreme.

Again the 2948g-L3 from cisco is a much better comparison - 22 Gbs backplane, over 10 Mpps of L3, full non-blocking fabric. yada yada yada

 
I would actually recommend you looking at some Xylan products. They have some really good systems and many are very upgradable (several items are rack-mounted switch gear that has modular slots that you can place many different kinds of items from fiber relays to gigabit ethernet to routers). Might be worth looking at.
 
I do not have the switch tests, but I can put you in touch with the person who does. The Foundry and Extreme switches are the best on the market. I personally would not recommend a Nortel switch, unless it is of the higher ISP grade switches. The Foundry switches at that level are considered the best from what I have been told. If you are looking for just a closet switch I would go either with the Cisco 3524/48XL or the Extreme Summit24/48. If you are looking for a backbone switch, I would look at the Cisco Catalyst 6500 or the Foundry series that is similar (I do not know of the actual model number).
 
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