Changing Away From Cisco Switches To HP

[AlexBradley]

Hey folks,

 

I hope somebody can give me some advice on this.

 

We're basically upgrading all our old 100mb switches from 2008 to 1GB switches in the next couple weeks.

 

We've chosen HP out of the possible hardware vendors as they have a pretty good lifetime warranty, the price is pretty good and the functionality of each seems worth the cost.

 

However, after consulting with Link2ICT, they've basically said that we can't move away from Cisco for our main switches that connect to their end. Apparently according to them the HP switches we are buying will not talk to their Cisco network and thus we must go for Cisco and Cisco only. We're spending about £6,000 on a complete refresh on our switches, a total of 11 switches, and just one of the proposed cisco alternatives is £3-4,000. We may need three of these.

 

Is this true that Cisco switches can only communicate in this manner with other Cisco switches? As to me, an amateur in switching technology and advanced networking, this seems like BS and a total rip off.

 

Any help would be grateful.

 

Cheers,

Alex

[3s-gtech]

You may have a router provided by Link2ICT that has some config on it set up by them (that's what we were provided with by our LA). However, the rest of your core should be independent - VLANs etc are generally governed by standards so should work fine between (they'd be configured by your core anyway I guess). Basically, you should be able to replace your own hardware without issue, though someone else on the same provider may be able to give more info.

[Roberto]

They may have set up something that requires a CISCO-specific implementation of something. That's always possible, but we have an entirely HP Procurve based network connected to a CISCO router for our JANET internet connection and we always have done.

 

The idea that HP and CISCO based networks can't talk to one another is a nonsense. The possibility that they've done something specific in their config that restricts your choices in this particular case does exist.

 

I would be asking them for specific technical details of what the issue is and why it was configured like that. And I would be very sceptical of any answer that sounded like they were trying to fudge the issue.

[themightymrp]

It may be that the LA have set their VLAN trunks to run over ISL (Inter-Switch Link) which is a Cisco proprietary protocol. The industry standard (and generic) would be 802.1Q. This is the only reason I could think of why they would insist on Cisco gear. Otherwsie you should be able to use whatever brand you want i.e. HP / Juniper etc.

[AlexBradley]

Hey folks, thanks for all the info.

 

I think I'm going to continue to chase them about it till they tell me exactly what the problem is with any other switch provider. I've got nothing against Cisco except the high prices, the fact that Link2ICT are forcing the issue and saying we can no longer work with them if we move to HP for our main Switch makes me wonder if this is some kind of big bluff. They really don't like change or doing what's best for the schools under them, having worked there myself, this seems likely the case at hand.

 

All your input has helped a lot though, thanks.

 

Time to pester Link!

[pete]

Ask for the technical reason behind their statement to find out if there's a real reason or if the first person you spoke to was just reading from a sheet.

 

EMBC had (have?) a "you have to use Cisco" rule/guidnace, but it was actually a "So long as you don't buy terrible switches, we really don't care" rule when you spoke to someone technical.

[AlexBradley]

Ask for the technical reason behind their statement to find out if there's a real reason or if the first person you spoke to was just reading from a sheet.

 

EMBC had (have?) a "you have to use Cisco" rule/guidnace, but it was actually a "So long as you don't buy terrible switches, we really don't care" rule when you spoke to someone technical.

 

See to me that makes sense but I've done some research and HP seem well received from other schools and businesses that have used them. I wouldn't mind so much if they gave an alternative to Cisco but instead they have just said that there Cisco network will only talk to a Cisco switch.

 

I've chased them up and hopefully will be emailed some details on why this is the case.

[3s-gtech]

You could always leave an existing Cisco switch plugged into the WAN, and build your new core around it, at least for now. They won't know any different, it'll work fine (unless you have greater than 100mbps net connection) and you can then proceed with your upgrades.

[AlexBradley]

I was worried that by leaving a 100mb switch in it'll drag the rest of the network down.

 

We're only just upgrading from a 10mb line to a 100mb beginning of next month, but anything still connected to the old cisco's will run at 100mb throughout the network and not 1gb.

 

I am tempted now to just upgrade everything and leave it in but I'd prefer to upgrade everything in one go too.

[Boredguy]

I like that idea of leaving the cisco switch connected to their router... just then plug your new infrastructure into it, so that cisco switch effectively only has 2 ports used... 1 to the router and 1 to your new core switch. As your net connection is only 100mb there shouldn't be any additional bottlenecks.

 

You could always test it with a single switch first before committing to the entire replacement.

[Michael]

Service Birmingham are correct - you need to leave 1 x Cisco 3550 or similar acting as your gateway, normally ending .50 within your local subnet. It's here they also apply ACLs and other configuration(s) unique to your school.

 

The fact you're upgrading all your LAN switches to Gigabit HP is completely irrelevant. Service Birmingham manage your WAN connection right up to your Cisco 3550, which is a 10/100 switch, so will of course handle your 10Mbps or in future 100Mbps WAN connection without any issues.

 

You would of course have to swap this out if upgrading beyond a 100Mbps WAN, but no doubt Service Birmingham have thought about this for larger establishments.

 

Edit: You just need to request that port 24 of the 3550 is no longer a trunk port, so it'll talk to your HP without any issues. I've done/requested this many times now

Edited March 17, 2015 by Michael

[AlexBradley]

So no other Switch could do the same job?

 

As for quantity, is it only one switch we'd have to leave in as we are split across two sites with a fibre link at both. Does this mean we'd need to keep one cisco at each location?

 

Cheers for the speedy assistance, looking like I'll order the HP's and upgrade the Cisco's when I have some surplus cash.

[3s-gtech]

I'd leave one per site. Don't worry about them slowing things down - they won't actually be part of your core switching, and they won't slow down a single 100mbps link passing through them. They could serve you happily in that role for years yet.

[Michael]

There probably are other Cisco's which will do the job, but I'm sure you have plenty of other things to worry about The Cisco 3550 is owned and maintained by Service Birmingham, so if it fails or there's a problem, it's their responsibility to replace or fix the issue. Normally this can be achieved remotely.

 

Even if you did replace the Cisco and it worked, why waste school money on this when it's Service Birmingham's responsibility? Hypothetically speaking, even if you did replace the Cisco 3550 with a Gigabit switch and it worked, your internet connection is still going to be 10Mbps and the port it's connected to will still connect at 10Mbps. Admittedly the Cisco 3550's are long discontinued, but the point is they work and can still easily process 10Mbps or 100Mbps WAN traffic without issue.

 

If you're connected via fibre at a distance (using the BGfL) say 2 miles apart, then yes, you'd need a Cisco 3550 at each end acting as a router. If you're talking about an on site fibre link (across a playground), you can optionally lose/drop the one Cisco 3550 and have everything all on one subnet. I have done exactly this for two schools right next to each other, but please communicate your intentions to Service Birmingham. I have and everything goes smoothly

 

So no other Switch could do the same job?

 

As for quantity, is it only one switch we'd have to leave in as we are split across two sites with a fibre link at both. Does this mean we'd need to keep one cisco at each location?

 

Cheers for the speedy assistance, looking like I'll order the HP's and upgrade the Cisco's when I have some surplus cash.

[AlexBradley]

There probably are other Cisco's which will do the job, but I'm sure you have plenty of other things to worry about The Cisco 3550 is owned and maintained by Service Birmingham, so if it fails or there's a problem, it's their responsibility to replace or fix the issue. Normally this can be achieved remotely.

 

Even if you did replace the Cisco and it worked, why waste school money on this when it's Service Birmingham's responsibility? Hypothetically speaking, even if you did replace the Cisco 3550 with a Gigabit switch and it worked, your internet connection is still going to be 10Mbps and the port it's connected to will still connect at 10Mbps. Admittedly the Cisco 3550's are long discontinued, but the point is they work and can still easily process 10Mbps or 100Mbps WAN traffic without issue.

 

If you're connected via fibre at a distance (using the BGfL) say 2 miles apart, then yes, you'd need a Cisco 3550 at each end acting as a router. If you're talking about an on site fibre link (across a playground), you can optionally lose/drop the one Cisco 3550 and have everything all on one subnet. I have done exactly this for two schools right next to each other, but please communicate your intentions to Service Birmingham. I have and everything goes smoothly

 

Well for one I wanted to keep everything uniformed when it came to the switches, I prefer having the same make across the board which helps when it comes to support and warranties. The other thing is we use most of the ports on the Cisco switch for internal communication, thus why I wanted to upgrade it to 1GB rather then leave it in to bottleneck the network.

 

As for the fibre link, we're certainly not 2 miles away but it is across the road and a little further than a playground away. My problem with SB is the time it takes for anything to get done. I asked for the info on why this had to be a Cisco switch on Monday and so far I've had one call telling me that's the way it is and that's it. No written notice as to why, no technical reason, just, that's the way it is.

[Michael]

Right - I think I'm getting a better understanding why you want to upgrade the Cisco 3550. At all the schools in Birmingham I support, none use the 3550 for internal communications - I design networks so it's there, but only acting as the school's router and nothing more - so only port 1 (for the media converter) and port 24 into your LAN are used. Previously port 11 was used for the proxy, but now that everything's centralised, this port is no longer used. I ask Service Birmingham to switch all other ports off. It's clean, simple and it does its job

 

This is just my preference and it also means if the 3550 is only processing WAN traffic, it isn't going to be busy processing LAN traffic or anything else. The other reason is because I can't manage the 3550 properly, whereas I can HP switches - where I can configure things exactly to the school's requirements.

 

Best advice I can give you is to do as I suggest. Buy higher capacity switches and don't use the 3550 for LAN traffic, only for WAN, then everything will work at Gigabit (where possible).

 

In some schools I've seen the Cisco 3550 acting as the core switch - which was OK back in the day, but even the smallest of networks benefit from Gigabit to the desktop, which speeds up logons and download speeds.

 

It sounds like you have two sites joined via the BGfL core, so you will need to leave two Cisco 3550's in place.

[AlexBradley]

Right - I think I'm getting a better understanding why you want to upgrade the Cisco 3550. At all the schools in Birmingham I support, none use the 3550 for internal communications - I design networks so it's there, but only acting as the school's router and nothing more - so only port 1 (for the media converter) and port 24 into your LAN are used. Previously port 11 was used for the proxy, but now that everything's centralised, this port is no longer used. I ask Service Birmingham to switch all other ports off. It's clean, simple and it does its job

 

This is just my preference and it also means if the 3550 is only processing WAN traffic, it isn't going to be busy processing LAN traffic or anything else. The other reason is because I can't manage the 3550 properly, whereas I can HP switches - where I can configure things exactly to the school's requirements.

 

Best advice I can give you is to do as I suggest. Buy higher capacity switches and don't use the 3550 for LAN traffic, only for WAN, then everything will work at Gigabit (where possible).

 

In some schools I've seen the Cisco 3550 acting as the core switch - which was OK back in the day, but even the smallest of networks benefit from Gigabit to the desktop, which speeds up logons and download speeds.

 

It sounds like you have two sites joined via the BGfL core, so you will need to leave two Cisco 3550's in place.

 

Thanks for the info, ordered the switches and I'm going to do as you say and keep the cisco switches limited to doing what they have to and nothing else.

 

Link2ICT & SB still haven't got back to me on whether we need one at each site but I guess I have a week before we start doing any replacing of switches anyway.

 

Cheers for the help ladies and gents, much appreciated.

[Michael]

Well in the short term - go with the idea you do and re-visit it once all your internal communications are up and running.