switch router in gigabit Ethernet

[francynet]

I have a backbone in SDH technology. In this network there are a lot of places that are connected together. They are urban centers and they offer data services to the access that are connected to. That access would be in Gigabit Ethernet (fiber) . Actually the costumer has some router cisco that are non able to support gigabit adapter module. Should be useful to use an architecture with switchs to serve more access and a router with 2 gigabit interface (1 for the WAN and 1 for la LAN=access end)? Could you advise me about a model of Router and a switch please? Or it should e better to use only 1 router with gigabit Etherner interface without switch? Could you tell me where can I find a possible case study equivalent please? Thank You very much.

francesca

[kerek]

Hi Francesca,

If I understand correctly you plan to provide access circuits by means of gigabit interfaces only (no serial). As you wrote the urban centers collecting many (not one) access circuits with GE interface. In this case obviously the right choice would be using switch. The model choice is greatly depends on other things like (throughput, qos, routing protocol etc.). If you use purely whatever Ethernet interfaces then L3 switch is pretty good choice, because L3 switches have much better performance compared to routers. SO you have the choice to migrate the whole network based on switches or you can use them as let's say media converters to connect the access circuits to the routers.

Krisztian