Does a switch really need to be this complicated?

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Mister Natural

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Our company took over an office previously owned by another company and my co worker went over there to reconfigure the network and other hardware. They had way too much overkill hardware wise. 5 computers total in the office and they had like 3 cisco 3560 16 port switches among other things.

We don't use cisco equipment and personally glad that we don't. My coworker brought all the hardware back to the office and I figure we'll check out the switches to see if we can use them elsewhere. I go online to download the manual and it turns out to be an 800 page document. Does a switch really need to be this complicated? I can understand a router maybe, but a switch?
 
3560's are layer 3 devices, thus the giant book of a manual.....PIF i'll take them if you don't want them :p
 
Sure, depending on what features and options you need out of your switches. The fact that they had three switches in one office says a lot about their ability to determine their needs, however.

Since your company is moving in I bet you can have a fun opening party after selling the equipment you found.. eBay lists them around $600 but those are 24-port versions.
 
LOL a 5 computer small business and they had 3560s? Someone must either have a really bad IT guy or some deep pockets. For 5 PCs a simple router and a switch will do fine. Those are more for like large businesses with tons of users, those features are more for when you're dealing with larger networks that have more specific needs.
 
Mister Natural said:
Our company took over an office previously owned by another company and my co worker went over there to reconfigure the network and other hardware. They had way too much overkill hardware wise. 5 computers total in the office and they had like 3 cisco 3560 16 port switches among other things.

We don't use cisco equipment and personally glad that we don't. My coworker brought all the hardware back to the office and I figure we'll check out the switches to see if we can use them elsewhere. I go online to download the manual and it turns out to be an 800 page document. Does a switch really need to be this complicated? I can understand a router maybe, but a switch?
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Are you an IT person? If you think the 800 page manual is complicated DO NOT try to connect to it and use the command line lol.
 
I'll trade you straight up for some unmanaged layer 2 switches. I'll even throw in a 5 page setup document.
 
Kaiga said:
LOL a 5 computer small business and they had 3560s? Someone must either have a really bad IT guy or some deep pockets. For 5 PCs a simple router and a switch will do fine. Those are more for like large businesses with tons of users, those features are more for when you're dealing with larger networks that have more specific needs.
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I'm sure by simple router and a switch you mean consumer crap. I don't allow that shit in my house much less at a business. Mind you 3 seems like overkill but we don't know what the capacity of the office was. It may have been wired for many more than 5 PCs. We also don't where the switches came from and what was paid for them. The one in my house was gotten for under 200.
 
Dunno...AFAIK the 3560 is just a mid-end switch for a normal network. It varies depending on the model, but most of them don't have anywhere near enough cpu to saturate all ports even with all the L3+ features turned off. It's also AFAIK the cheapest cisco L3 switch with decent qos support.

Not sure why they had three of them...maybe the idea was one for the PCs, one for the phones, and one spare? Redundant links for every pc? In any case, I'm sure their former IT support was a cisco shop not paying retail prices for gear.

My coworker brought all the hardware back to the office and I figure we'll check out the switches to see if we can use them elsewhere.
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Err...if you are supposed to be supporting a remote office, wouldn't it be kinda essential to have a switch that lets you login remotely?
 
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what did you swap them for? Please don't say some netgear 3Com unmanaged switches.
 
I have some 3com switches in an environment I work in right now...ugh to go back in time and suggest either HP switches (not hp switches that are still 3com) or cisco equipment.

800 pages is nothing for a switch with decent features.
 
ya, buy HP switches, web interface, done
 
basic cisco command line isn't that hard as long as you know your show commands

I just use the ? command a lot :D

I find cisco routers to be much much harder via CLI than switches.
 
FLECOM said:
ya, buy HP switches, web interface, done
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:confused:

The company I work for uses Cisco switches everywhere, heck I have a 3560-12PC setting on my desk at work (Use of multiple vlan's on different devices).

Granted money isn't much of an issue for the company I work for, but it's more than that. When the day comes that another company can come anywhere near close to Cisco's support for a cheaper price, then we can talk.

I'm with Berg0 and everyone else, if you don't want them, we'll take em.
 
Cisco 3560's aren't complicated. They are fairly rich with features though. I don't know what manual it is that you downloaded, but I have never seen a Cisco switch manual anywhere near 800 pages. Hell, the CCNP switching book is only 460 pages.

It doesn't get complicated until you start messing with multiblade switches.

You may only have 5 systems but I would still keep one of those 3560's in place...or two for redundancy. They are reliable, will probably meet your needs without any configurations, and are perfect when/if you decide to expand that office. Plus they will run damn near forever in the worst conditions.
 
You obviously have a deep understanding of high-end enterprise switching.
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I apologize for failing to further confuse the OP by including technical terms like "switch fabric," "etherchannel," or "vlan" in my response. I also apologize for having very little experience with high-end enterprise switching, because like 99.9% of the human race, I've never worked at a noc or for an isp.

Since you're the expert, why don't you take this opportunity to educate the rest of us instead of derailing the thread?

What does "saturate all ports" even mean?
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The smallest packet is 64 bytes, which means your switch fabric needs roughly 1.5Mpps per switch port to get "true" line rate switching. Then you need enough cpu to perform whatever additional processing there is that isn't supported by your switch's asic (QoS, dynamic routing, etc) at the same rate.

Most of the 3560s don't have nearly bandwidth in the fabric or processing power in the cpu to actually handle 2Gbps max packet rate on every port,especially with the optional / non-asic-supported features turned on. IOW, these switches are "oversubscribed" and could possibly become overwhelmed with traffic and drop packets or even crash/reboot in normal operation. That is the difference between a "high-end"/backbone switch and a normal/"mid-end" switch like the 3560.
 
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I too have a bunch of switches that I had acquired from a friend of a friend. They manuals seem very complicated, but I just replaced my cheep 8 port netgear switch, pluged one of them in and it seems to work... I'm not much of an networking guy, just a computer enthusiast.

Here is what I have, are they worth anything??

Cisco 2950
Netgear FS524
PowerDSine 4012

Probably extreme overkill for my home network, and there is probably a better way to utilize them, but I'm using the Netgear right now...
 
The Cisco 2950 is a good switch if you're okay with only having 10/100.

The netgear is okay, if it's unmanaged. I don't like managed netgear switches.
 
thefreeaccount said:
Since you're the expert, why don't you take this opportunity to educate the rest of us instead of derailing the thread?.
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Don't get your panties in a twist dude lol. It's fun to bust each other's balls in IT ... otherwise it gets boring.

High end enterprise switch vs regular switch:
1) Significantly greater feature set that's less buggy
2) Reliability
3) Performance
4) Manageability (powerful CLI, SNMP traps, central auth, automated config backups)
5) Great support

Most organizations really don't care about any of that ... since:
1) feature set - 1 flat vlan in a very small office, or at most a couple
2) reliability - when it breaks, call your IT company and have them put in another cheap switch .. don't really care about 3-4 hours downtime
3) performance - who cares if its low latency / high throughput .. it doesn't affect their bottom line.
4) manageability - CLI...er why would i ever use that?
5) support - for all the reasons above, its hardly ever used

So yeah, all depends on what you need. For the work I'm involved with now, I need the best of the best, in fact.. I need better than what is out there today. But I have prior experience years ago where small companies really didn't need anything "highend".
 
I never said anything about giving them away. I just wondered why there needs to be an 800 page manual for a switch. After learning they are a layer 3 switch though I can understand that a little better. Like I said we normally don't use Cisco much. But I'm sure we'll find a place to use them. Certainly they will be reliable devices to make use of. And it'll give me a chance to educate myself with the device. We use procurve for the most part.
 
Also, there are _a lot_ of layer 2 features that switches support these days. Setting them up as a basic switch isn't really hard but a hefty manual is handy for all the fancy stuff like 802.1x, igmp snooping, L2 filtering etc.
 
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