Original mail request
Hello sun-managers,
I would like to know if any of you use the 3Com LanPlex2500
intelligent switching engine hubs on your Sun networks and
if so what is the general network performance like.
regards,
James.
I would like to thank all those who responded.
Here were the mail responses.> From jerome@ssd.ie Thu Jan 11 10:00 GMT 1996
> Date: Thu, 11 Jan 96 09:47:55 GMT
> From: Jerome Nolan <jerome@ssd.ie>
> To: jamesc@s3two.ie
> Subject: Re: 3Com LanPlex2500 hub on SUN network
> Cc: jn@ssd.ie
> Content-Type: text
> Content-Length: 1354
>
>
> you might want to check out the internal buffering of the individual ports
> for the switch. if you have a server on one of the ports that everybody
> is trying to access, you could get buffer overflows and everything hangs.
>
> one was dropped in to the network here connecting up some shared hubs and
> application servers.
> every so often everything just locked up - we believe due to due the above
> problem.
>
>
> if you're looking at hardware to connect sun workstation to servers/backbones
> you're looking for desktop switched hubs, LinkSwitch1000 from 3com or
> Grand Junction's FastSwitch 10/100 would probably be you're best bet.
> they're 24 10 Mb port switches with optional multiple 100Mb connections to
> either fibre or utp. you can just drop them in to replace you 10mb shared hubs.
> these designs are asic-based as distinct from the LanPlex2500 which is
> Microprocessor-based so can deal with much higher throughput. There also seems
> to be adequate buffering on their receive ports.
>
> 3com also have shared and switched 100mb hubs. the switched hub has 6 ports.
> i don't believe that grand junction have a 100mb switched hub yet. they've
> just been taken over by cisco so their stategy is not clearly defined.
>
> Another plus is that the LinkSwitch 1000 was designed in 3com in blanchardstown.
> i know of several other sites in ireland that are also using them.
>
>
>
********************************************************************
> From jgotobed@LPL.Arizona.EDU Wed Jan 10 13:49 GMT 1996
> Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 06:51:02 -0700
> From: jgotobed@LPL.Arizona.EDU (Joe Gotobed)
> To: jamesc@s3two.ie
> Subject: Re: 3Com LanPlex2500 hub on SUN network
> X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII
> Content-Type: text
> Content-Length: 525
>
> Yes. I have two of them.
>
> ->From sun-managers-relay Wed Jan 10 05:52:24 1996
> I would like to know if any of you use the 3Com LanPlex2500
>
> The campus has another 10 or more installed. They're good
> units though recently suffered from defects in their powersupplys.
> All in all though they've been trouble free.
>
> I'd suggest you compare them to the Cabletron's recent offerings.
> They're selling a standalone switch with three slots. One for
> a FDDI module & the other two for their 24port Eswitch mods. It
> looks pretty good.
>
> Joe
>
*************************************************************************
> From peter@ifm.liu.se Thu Jan 11 00:22 GMT 1996
> From: Peter Eriksson <peter@ifm.liu.se>
> Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 01:24:55 +0100
> To: jamesc@s3two.ie
> Subject: Re: 3Com LanPlex2500 hub on SUN network
> Newsgroups: mail-lists.sun-managers
> X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #2 (NOV)
> Content-Type: text
> Content-Length: 1645
>
> In mail-lists.sun-managers you write:
>
>
>
> Yes we do. The network performance with them is just stellar. I'm a
> _very_ happy customer of those switches/routers.
>
> Our network consists of four LanPlex 2500's, a 3Com LinkBuilder FDDI hub
> and some 40 3Com FMS2 TP hubs. The LanPlex'es is connected to each other via
> a double FDDI ring (which also connects the LinkBuilder FDDI hub). The FMS
> hubs are all connected to the LanPlexes via Fiber-ethernet (10Base-FL).
>
> One of the LanPlexes also acts as our router to the rest of the University
> (connected to the University FDDI ring), routing IP and Appletalk.
>
> Then we have two SS20/712 servers connected to the FDDI hub via FDDI-fiber
> (via Sun's FDDI/3.0 Sbus cards) and two UltraServer 1/170's (via Sun's
> FDDI/4.0 Sbus cards). Works perfectly.
>
> Just remember to disable Solaris 2's IP MTU Path Discovery feature
> (if you don't then the LanPlexes will discard all packets from FDDI
> to Ethernet that are bigger than 1500 bytes). There is no performance
> penalty for doing this. (Do that by editing /etc/init.d/inetinit and
> adding:
>
> ndd -set /dev/ip ip_path_mtu_discovery 0
>
> and then reboot your machine. Make sure the hard link to inetinit from
> the other rc?.d directory isn't lost).
>
> - Peter
>
>
>
>
> --
> Peter Eriksson <peter@ifm.liu.se> Computer Systems Manager
> WWW: http://www.ifm.liu.se/~peter/ Phone: +46 13 282786
> Linköping University, Department of Physics, S-581 83 Linköping, Sweden
>
*******************************************************************
> From fruechte@rz5.rz.fh-wilhelmshaven.de Thu Jan 11 07:50 GMT 1996
> X-Mailer: exmh version 1.6.1 5/23/95
> To: jamesc@s3two.ie (James Cassidy)
> Cc: fruechte@rz5.rz.fh-wilhelmshaven.de
> Subject: Re: 3Com LanPlex2500 hub on SUN network
> Mime-Version: 1.0
> Date: Thu, 11 Jan 96 08:55:34 +0100
> From: Henning Fruechtenicht <fruechte@rz5.rz.fh-wilhelmshaven.de>
>
> Hello James,
>
>
> We are using LanPlex2500 switches in a heterogeneous environment since October
> 1995
> without problems. The environment consists of two FDDI rings connected via
> LanPlex2500.
>
> One of the rings is a server ring containing 6 Unix servers and 2 Novell
> servers, all attached via FDDI concentrator. Most of the servers are using
> fibre optic cables, two machines are connected via UTP (MLT3).
>
> The other ring is our campus backbone, consisting of two LanPlex2500 and a
> Cisco AGS+. Behind these components we are using 10Mbit/s ethernet.
>
> We have a total of 600 PCs and 100 workstations. The average load are 200 PCs
> and 40 workstations attached to the network simultaniously.
>
> The performance is very good, the only problem we have are some elder ethernet
> segments with too many machines.
>
> The switches are configured straight ahead, this means plug and play ;-) , no
> private ethernets, filtering, or routing.
>
> Before installing the switches we had a collapsed backbone using the AGS+
> which had tremedous performance problems (CPU load up to 90 percent over five
> minutes.
>
> Bye,
>
> Henning
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Henning Fruechtenicht fruechtenicht@rz.fh-wilhelmshaven.de
> Rechenzentrum Tel.: +49 4421 985323
> FH Wilhelmshaven Fax.: +49 4421 81950
> Friedrich-Paffrath-Str. 101
> D-26389 Wilhelmshaven
>
>
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