Is anyone here using Layer3 Switches on their Canopy networks? If so what experience do you have, or do you have another alternative. I am trying to find a efficient way to control broadcast storms on our network.
kmcelroy wrote: Is anyone here using Layer3 Switches on their Canopy networks? If so what experience do you have, or do you have another alternative. I am trying to find a efficient way to control broadcast storms on our network.
I'm running all sorts of Cisco Catalyst switches, both layer2 and layer3. Smallest Layer3 switch you can get is a Catalyst 3550-EMI.
The most efficient – lowest cost – would be to use the Canopy SM as a layer-3 switch by turning on NAT. This method also provides a single point for management, and a single point of failure.
If you need multiple ports behind an SM, 4 and 8-port routers cost little more than 4 or 8-port layer-2 switches. They also allow separate password access if switch/router duties are handled by non-Canopy techs; they can terminate VPN tunnels (with specific models); and they avoid the Canopy web page lockup problem if you monitor your nodes using something like What’s Up.
High-end layer-3 switches from Cisco, 3Com, and others provides greater throughput and managability, but at a higher cost. You need to determine if the cost is justified.
For throughput, a D-Link or LinkSys SOHO router won’t be able to match the data rate of a Canopy backhaul pair, or a lightly loaded AP. For an AP with over 100 SMs, however, the cheap router will work fine at each SM.
I dont have Canopy hardware installed yet, but i am going to Use Netgear & Cisco Equipment. NATS Provide Network address translation…Just alow you to use One-To-Many.
So that you can have 256 Users to one public IP?