Hello John,

well.. if you are expecting a 50 users + few servers, i would suggest to for a 12 port Layer 3 swiitch as the core to do the routing part and let the access switches be conncted with the core. It gives you much flexibility for future upgrades. and let the router do only the routing part.

Regards

Harish.

Hi John,

Layer 3 will be good because it can perform the routing protocols as well. In router on stick there will be some network over head coz traffic will always travel through router where L3 can perform it on same hardware.

thanks

it really varies on the model of the L3 switch and the backplace throughput is the one which get over the stack.

by the way why do you need eigrp support ?

regards

Harish.

Layer 3 switches tend to have packet switching throughputs in the millions of packets per second (pps), while traditional general-purpose routers have evolved from the 100,000 pps range to over a million pps. Aggregate performance is one of the key differences between Layer 3 switches and traditional routers. Traditional routers still offer key features used typically in WAN environments. However, many of those features, such as multicast routing, multiprotocol routing, IBM feature sets, routing protocol stability, are still key for Layer 3 switches/campus routers.

it depends on make and model.

http://www.itworld.com/answers/topic/hardware/question/whats-difference-between-layer-3-switch-and-router

thanks

But you can change the speed, like we do one most of our switches. We always change our one connection to 100MB

Please check this link

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/lan/catalyst3560/software/release/12.2_52_se/configuration/guide/swint.html#wp1080632

and see this section

Configuring Interface Speed and Duplex Mode

thanks

sorry it was " we always change our one office connection"

You're not going to come anywhere near the capabilities of a 3560 with 50'ish users, the Layer 3 switch will work fine, and also your router on a stick scenario will also work fine for what you have described so far.

From a simplicity perspective, the layer 3 switch is a better idea. From a throughput perspective, the layer 3 switch is most likely a better idea as well, a router on a stick design reduces the throughput of an interface by half.

For a high end environment with heavy route processing, a layer 3 switch is typically not recommended, because it does routing in software, where as a router uses hardware, but you have not described an envrinoment that will be demanding on layer 3 performance.

HTH,

Craig

Craig

For a high end environment with heavy route processing, a layer 3 switch is typically not recommended, because it does routing in software, where as a router uses hardware

You have this wrong way round. Although some high end routers route in hardware most routers forward packets via software. All L3 switches by contrast uses hardware to forward L3 packets and are therefore far more suited to enviroments where you need a high throughput of L3 packets.

Jon