From: Jerry (phase90@comcast.net)
Date: Wed Feb 19 2003 - 14:31:29 GMT-3
Jeff,
Sadly, it seems you have run into a sad scenario. I personally
have run into a similar scenario
at my place of employment. Of course an STP blocked port is perfectly
normal. They do not even
realize the blocked port is preventing the loop. This is a case of
where the management skipped learning how layer 2 works and became a manager
by using layer 8.
What you want to do would probably be a great network improvement. The
problem is actually
doing it in a production network would require a small outage if done
carefully. The management probably doesn't want that headache. What you
want to do can be done. You will have to
go into a layer 8 [ politics and BS layer ] to convince someone in
management that it's worth it.
Good luck.
Jerry
----- Original Message -----
From: jeff gercken <jeffgercken@hotmail.com>
To: <ccielab@groupstudy.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2003 10:40 AM
Subject: OT 6500 Topology question
> I'm hoping someone can help me understand this. I am a network engineer
for
> a gov't facility in Indiana. We have (32) 6509's connected (Gig E) in hub
> fashion to two 6509 core switches w/ MSFC's (each having priority of one
of
> two hsrp gateways). There are also around 53 vlans configured and
> statically trunked to various access-layer switches. Our utilization is
> almost nothing with 'sh traffic' indicating a peak of 5%.
>
> Vlans that are only on 1 access-layer switch are not trunked between the
> core switches meaning there are no STP blocked lines. The DHCP server
> assigns the gateways by round-robin.
>
> I wanted to move to a topology using uplinkfast and balancing by STP
> portvlan priorities. My reasoning was as much for monitoring as for
> convergence. Right now I have no idea how the traffic is flowing and
trying
> to use a sniffer is about impossible.
>
> I've been overruled by the guys in DC who seem to believe that a STP
blocked
> link is just as bad as a loop. None will explain their position, just a
> 'because I said so' answer. They also wouldn't let me increase the core
> capacity using etherchannel. Our Cisco NSA Engineer(no, not that NSA) was
> down pushing AVID so I took the opportunity to ask. He took the same
> position as headquarters but really didn't/couldn't explain why.
>
> Does any of this make sense to anyone? Would you please help me to
> understand because it seems to sacrifice a lot just so you can have 2
> gigabit links instead of 1.
>
> I don't mean to clog up the list with this so please reply directly.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Jeff
>
>
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