>The pre-sales engineer's response was:
>
>The 4000 series is not a "backbone" switch according to Cisco...
>
>-Brad
Let me begin by quoting then-President Theodore Roosevelt about
then-Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes:
"I could carve out of a banana a man with more backbone than that!"
Not exactly sure what the quote has to do with routing and switching,
but it's nice to get attention in a discussion of backbones.
People lose sight of the purpose of "backbone" or "core" in
hierarchical models. While the core MAY indeed aggregate bandwidth
and need the highest-speed routers/switches, that isn't necessarily
true.
Especially in environments when most of the traffic is local (think
80/20), the greatest capacity may need to be at the distribution
tier. I can think of one client where I improved performance by
swapping the very underutilized 7000 "core" routers with 4500
"distribution routers." On further measurement, I found the 4500's
could be replaced by 2500's. At most, we only had a pair of T1's
linking sites in the core.
Backbones tend to attract strange terminology. "Collapsed backbone"
always sounds to me as more of an orthopedic emergency than a
desirable condition, but it seems to have become a term that will not
go away. In such cases, yes, the greatest bandwidth will be in the
core, and the backbone router/switch will need the greatest power.
Remember that collapsed backbones may very well describe an
environment where the servers are primarily in a server room distant
to the clients, even though the servers may be on the same VLAN.
VLAN-aware NICs can be very useful but don't always fit the basic
hierarchical model.
Bottom line: the pre-sales engineer is oversimplifying at best.
Yes, some of the Cisco materials do distinguish among "backbone" and
"edge" environments, but those materials tend to assume collapsed
backbones with substantial bandwidth requirements.
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "nigel samuel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: "Brad Ellis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Cisco Group Study"
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Sent: Saturday, July 01, 2000 9:04 AM
>Subject: Re: Pre-sales People
>
>
> > That does sound strange, I did work as a pre -sales guy for a while. I
> > basically knew most customers don't want to spend lots of cash on
>equipment,
> > but it was important to think about the future growth. Of course some
> > customers were max out on their network, so tossing money at the problem
> > was necessary. Pre-sales are sometimes told to push certain equipment
> > depending on vendor discounts, incentives etc.
> >
> > In that case it does sound strange 2 -6000's to replace one 8 port switch.
> > Is it possible the 8 port switch was acting as a backbone to lot of
>servers
> > down stream? Usually the Pre-sales engineer's proposal will give a reason
> > for the recommendation. If they are think about the future you can always
> > add another later??
> >
> > Nigel
> >
> > Brad Ellis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > 8jjsaq$rjs$[EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:8jjsaq$rjs$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > > Hi! Does anyone else work with a pre-sales engineer that over quotes
>bids
> > > (ie: suggests 16 megs of flash for an IOS that uses only 4-5 megs of
> > space)?
> > > We have a customer that has an 8-port intel switch. This guy suggested
> > (2)
> > > Catalyst 6000s to replace this single Intel switch. Needless to say the
> > > customer was a little shocked when he saw the cost. We were replacing
>an
> > > 8-port intel switch with about 96 ports total!!!
> > >
> > > Are all pre-sales engineers like this? Im just curious. I havent done
> > much
> > > pre-sales work as I enjoy the post-sales work quite a bit more.
> > >
> > > any input is appreciated.
> > >
> > > thanks!
> > > -Brad
> > > p.s. if anyone needs a 8540MSR to replace your 25xx router, let me
>know!!!
> > > lol
> > >
> > >
> > > ___________________________________
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> >
> >
>
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