OC3

[sjonessha]

I am going to be handing off an OC3 to a customer. I currently have a 3550 (2 GBICS) on one end and a 2950 EI 2 GBICS on the other end. Will this work?

[Joseph W. Doherty]

Both the 3550 and 2950 EI were marketed as Metro Access switches because of their advanced feature sets.

See:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps646/products_data_sheet09186a00800913d0.html

and

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps628/products_data_sheet09186a0080088899.html

They both also appear likely to have sufficient performance to handle the additional bandwidth you wish to add.

One feature found in some of newer Cisco Metro Switches, but not found in these, is a shaper (other than physical port egress queuing). A shaper is a "must have" if you want to be able to fully manage some of your slower WAN bandwidth, but if you don't intend to do so, you should be able to use what you have.

[sjonessha]

It's funny you should mention a shaper. I just purchased a Neteqalizer traffic shaper and it has really helped with the conjestion. I will not be placing it on the OC3 port because it is only 45 meg.

[Joseph W. Doherty]

Ah, that's interesting! I'm not surprised by the improvement you report.

When dealing with congestion, you can either try to obtain enough bandwidth such that congestion doesn't form, or manage it. Since bandwidth isn't available in infinite amounts, when congestion forms, optimal solutions often require a mixture of bandwidth and bandwidth management.

Switches and routers offer various levels of bandwidth management but such capabilities are often far short (currently) of what's offered by dedicated appliances. The primary advantage of using the capabilities of the switch or router is, it's often "free", and depending on the situation, also often "good enough".

If your increased bandwidth precludes using your dedicated shaper, and congestion becomes an issue, you might try using the features of your 2950/3550. If that's insufficient and you don't wish to increase bandwidth, you can move up to "smarter" switches and/or trade up your shaper appliance.

[sjonessha]

Thanks for the help. I'll let you all know how it works.