RouterDiscussions.com

Gday Ivor, Firstly, Id like to assure anyone reading this, not to be put off by the Linksys SxE switches, they really are pretty good. Secondly, Ivor I think wed better agree to disagree on this, as we are coming from two very different directions.You are clearly very knowledgeable about both networking and the Linksys/Cisco products and have had a lot of time to absorb the various differences.I, on the other hand, work in the SME space. This space is dominated by price and variety, I don think I would have one client that uses all of a single type/vendors products. Argh!!!!! I just spent approx 2hrs researching my reply, only to get an error, when I submitted, and then the above text was all that was retained. Will know better, next time to write my response in Notepad first.Anyway, I don have any more time to spend on this, so forgive my brevity, the previous response was much nicer.. Yes you are right, had I more time I would clearly have made a different choice RE SFE1000P/SFE2000, but the brief descriptions on the model page is misleading. There are a lot of differences between the SxE1 and SxE2 ranges, for example non stacking, Fanless and PoE. So I would have thought highlighting the differences would be more helpful. You have to remember that when we call suppliers they don necessarily have everything in stock, so our choice (while on the phone) was... SFE1000P or SGE2000...In fact the most helpful would be a feature Matrix.I retract my crack about the IOS, it was not called for, the SxE are really good value for money. RE Case# sorry I had that on a postit, which I think has since gone into the bin. when I didn think I needed it.I do think your Helpdesk needs more organisational training though. There is no reason I can think of why (if the answer was so obvious....) that after 3 calls and being told of a "Team Meeting" to discuss the issue, it wasn resolved. (Note the 2nd call was 2hrs+ and they had full remote control of the PC). Thanks for the Ref guide, yes I had read this and the statement "Combining VLANs and GARP (Generic Attribute Registration Protocol) allows network managers to define network nodes into Broadcast domains." was what got me on the wrong track RE: GARP/GVRP. As you say, they do a similar thing at Layer2. So for a Network Engineer it may be obvious, but for the rest of us that don live and breathe the OSI Model, the difference is pretty subtle. Anyway, bottom line for me is:I will continue to buy Linksys switches from Cisco, and would recommend them to anyone. But will obviously take more care in the future RE Specs, and hopefully not get the same experience when I call the Helpdesk next time, and will remember to post to this forum! Rgds Ben.

  Ben, Firstly, SFE1000P is marketed strictly as a L2 switch so no ambiguity around that at all. We market the SxE2xxx family as the static Layer 3 products - if you look at the website and datasheets, you will find this to be true. Secondly, VLANs and GVRP/GARP operate at L2 in the OSI model. VLANs create isolated workgroups at the layer 2 level and GVRP/GARP provides a way for switches to learn about VLANs configured on another switch dynamically. The statement in the article you attached is accurate - this combination of VLANs and GARP does organize network nodes into broadcast domains. Layer 3 protocols like IP, operate above this layer and it does not mix. IP together with RIP/OSPF does a similar thing at L3 as VLANs with GVRP/GARP accomplish at L2. Not sure if you have seen the Switch Reference Guide on cisco.com which describes the Static Routing screens for SxE2000 amongst others:http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switche ... fguide.pdf As a company, we have products that deliver dynamic L3 functionality - this is the Catalyst line of switches. The SxE2xxx products address the static L3 part of the market and below. It addresses a specific need and is not intended to solve all problems. It does exactly what it is marketed to do and customers who buy it for that purpose are happy with it. Ben – if you are willing to post your case number, we can have someone in the Support organization give you a call so that we can engage on this topic directly. Thanks,Ivor

Gday,All good points, that the Helpdesk should have told me within 15 minutes of my call.Im not a Certified Network Engineer, and nor should I be expected to be one when purchasing SME devices.Isn that what a Helpdesk is for? Re documentation, yes I see that now that the "Layer 3" entry does specifically mention Static, and doesn mention OSPF/RIP.The reason I thought this would work was because of GARP and GVRP, I had assumed that these would combine to provide the equivalent of ARP. A fact I asked about on the helpdesk as well, but they didn know.Even the QA docs on the subject are misleading in my opinion as they say:VLANs function at Layer 2. Since VLANs isolate traffic within the VLAN, a Layer 3 router working at a protocol level is required to allow traffic flow between VLANs. Layer 3 routers identify segments and coordinate with VLANs. VLANs are Broadcast and Multicast domains. Broadcast and Multicast traffic is transmitted only in the VLAN in which the traffic is generated.and then:Combining VLANs and GARP (Generic Attribute Registration Protocol) allows network managers to define network nodes into Broadcast domains.So thats where I got the idea that GARP/GVRP would do the trick, will obviously in the future look for OSPF and RIP instead. None of the VLAN Q&As specifically mention routing between VLANs and the specific Routing Q&A does not really mention mention VLANs either.So was there documentation I missed? My main gripe was that even after I contacted your Helpdesk, I was no better off after 2hrs on the ph and 4 days waiting.I get it that VLANS are complex, but I expect Vendor support to be a little more responsive. Even Allyus response, while great, was 5 days after my original post, which was 2 days after my first call to the Helpdesk and 5 days after we had replaced the original SFE1000P with the SFE2000, the former being the ONLY SxExxx switch that does not do "Static" Layer3.....great marketing!If you are going to produce switches with complex features, such as VLANS, at relatively low price points, than you have to match the customer expectations.Otherwise, IMHO drop the SxE range, and stick to IOS. Rgds Ben

  SFE2000 is a static L3 device and is advertised as such. This means it does not support Dynamic Routing protocols like RIP or OSPF. It can perform inter-VLAN routing at wirespeed but the routes need to be manually configured. Static L3 switches on the market performs the same way. This is not a switch “problem” but really is the nature of how static L3 devices work. This is why you needed to configure the routes manually. In reference to your comment “Sorry, you can bridge VLANS on this device, you will need to configure the Layer 3 Routing within the device"<<My response>> A switch by its nature forwards L2 traffic within a VLAN transparently and isolates traffic between VLANs. Layer 3 devices (router or L3 switch) perform routing between the VLANs. There are two kinds of L3 devices – static and dynamic. Dynamic routing devices learn about the routes in the network through a routing protocol like RIP or OSPF. With static routing devices, these routes need to be manually configured. BTW, this is true for products from other vendors on the market as well. SFE2000 can perform inter-VLAN routing but the routes need to be manually configured.

Actually, its not, becuase while the "Simple" routers we have are pretty basic, they are much better than the SFE2000, in that they provide more information, Wireless, DHCP, DNS etc. In addition, for monitoring, we now have two completely diffrent device types to monitor, instead of one, so have had to duplicate all of the vairous laerts etc. The outcome to this is that it has cost us (not the client) many hours of work, for no gain in functionality/useability.If we had known prior to this, exactly what capability the SFE2000 had, and how it worked, we may have designed the WAN differently, but now we are stuck with a very complicated solution for a very simple problem.The Local Router, now forwards to the Switch, which then forwards to the Regional routers. All of which need their own settings, and routes etc.After calling the Linksys support 3 times(2hrs, 15 mins, 5 mins) and being told they would "discuss" it with colleagues, and call me back (which never happened), it is clear that this was not as simple a task as I would have imagined. The reason for a helpdesk is to get help. All I needed was. "Sorry, you can bridge VLANS on this device, you will need to configure the Layer 3 Routing within the device". So while I will close this request, Im still not happy with the outcome.Address resolution and broadcasting should be easy on a Layer3 device so I don understand why IRB is not a feature of this switch. Rgds Ben.