Testing switches what are some things Ishould look for

[CowboyBebop]

Hi all,
I have a cisco 3524 XL switch that my background is mainly routers, hubs,lan, and WAN technologies. What should I be looking for or testing it the environment is Token ring, IP, SNA and Appletalk. I'm just looking for info on potential problems, known problems and some insight on switches any help will be appreciated.
I know a little about Vlans and how switches work mostly text book, not a lot of hands on thanks!!!

 

[michaelroark29]

you have on hell of a switch to start learning about VLAN's on,, there's two different types of VLANs, honestly, the User's Guide that Cisco has for the 3524XL (and 3524PWRXL) are pretty good at explaining everything, (hence the phrase "read the instructions&quot I've read it, pretty easy reading to follow. go to CCO (Cisco Connection Online) and search for it. If you can't find it, I think I have it saved somewhere.
michael.roark@4its.org
PS are you using VoIP?
if you are, I definately need to talk to you, spent many nights on the phone with TAC and Salt Lake about that...

 

[spidey07]

Potential problems:

1) Be sure to turn on spanning-tree portfast on all host ports (ports that have end stations plugged in), otherwise DHCP, AppleTalk and IPX will cause all sorts of probems.
2) If you are doing any kind of translational bridging on a router watch out for spanning-tree loops and make sure your bridge protocol on the router is IEEE.
3) This being a single switch you really have no need to configure any trunking or VLANs. However play all you like that's the beautyf of having a lab. READ, READ, READ
4) If you're doing any source-route bridging on the token ring remember that ethernet does not support any SRB, only translational and transparent.

have fun!
spidey

 

[michaelroark29]

If He has one server and two VLANs, that's always a joy to set up (depending on the type of server NIC in his box..)
OK to do if you're bored, not if someone is making you...
I'm kinda curious why the Token ring setup???

 

[spidey07]

I can answer the token ring setup.

SNA=IBM shop=TOKEN RING

Keep in mind that there are plenty of companies that run token ring great.

EDIT
Almost forgot - SNA was developed for Token Ring, running it on ethernet works, but you can run into some problems. SNA expects the guaranteed develivery that token ring offers. That's why the poll timers are so low. The entire mechanics of the protocol expect the frame to be delivered. Ethernet is a best effort protocol with no explict receipt mechanism.

 

[CowboyBebop]

Thanks for all the replies I'll have this switch for about 3 more weeks I'm sure I'll run into something, THanks!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[CowboyBebop]

Hey guys,
I'm having a problem with the web interface and don't see how to add the IP address to the interface. But i'm sure I can find it but other than that I'm using internet explorer 5.50 and I downloaded/installed the plugin and other than the IP address that should be about it. I want to flood this thing with traffic to see how it handles it but I don't know how because they have our Dolch wan sniffer setup in a permanent location in the NOC so I can't take it and use the packet generator . The cisco rep told me the backplane on this thing was more than the combined bandwidth of all the ports..... I kinda wanna call his bluff

 

[spidey07]

Man you have way too much free time on your hands. (yeah, and I'm sittin here postin...go figure I believe the 3524 has a 10.2 gigabit backplane giving about a 5 gig forwarding rate

stay away from the web based configuration. It sucks bigtime. Go command line.

techie stuff