They look good. I'll take a more detailed review tomorrow. Do remember that if we centralize routing, we're also centralizing failure. One bad switch can now take down an entire site. On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 3:15 AM, Bart Kus <me@bartk.us> wrote:
Dear Ben-Jammin',
So you might recall our recent discussion where you weighed in favor of putting "real" switches into the cell sites to tie the radios together. My major pushback to you was the price of a typical Cisco/etc switch.
Well, I've updated the "Ethernet Switch - 8 port<https://www.hamwan.org/t/tiki-index.php?page=Ethernet+Switch+-+8+port&structure=HamWAN>" page with 3 new alternatives! They're a miniscule amount of money more than the D-Link smart switch, and are in fact full blown RouterOS routers. They also feature 2 more ports (10 total) than the 8-port requirement, but the catch is only 5 of the ports are GigE. This might be OK since all the 5SHPn radios are 100Mbit only. The GigE requirement was for future-proofing only.
The other super nice thing is they can do MPLS-TE and preserve QoS. This might simplify the network structure a lot by moving routing off of the modems and into these routers. Instead of 7 linked routers at a busy cell site, we'd have 1. The routing tables get a lot easier. These routers also have more routing horsepower than what's in the modems. Especially the $105 model, which features a faster CPU and twice the RAM.
2 of the 3 are also rack-mountable, which might be a good thing in most sites.
Finally, the idea of using a single OS for all networking is appealing. No need for fragmented administrator education, and all the gear is designed to work together.
Let me know what you think. I'm kinda psyched about this approach. I ordered a RB2011UAS-2HnD-IN for my personal home use to replace my AP+router here. We'll see how it works out here.
--Bart
RB2011UAS2HnDIN
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-- Benjamin