From: Erick B. (erickbe@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Mar 15 2003 - 05:09:01 GMT-3
I don't know of any Cisco product off hand, but you
may want to look at Nortel Passport 8600 series. They
were the first on the block with the split channels
across different switches (called Split MLT). I don't
think there gear acts as a single l3 device through
clustering but they have VRRP. Both SMLT and 3Com XRN
channeling are 802.3ad I believe as well. I'm not sure
how this would interact with cisco's spanning tree
offhand either. SMLT is suppose to get around spanning
tree issues. Nortel Passport/Acclear product line has
been around/developing for quite sometime compared to
the latest 3Com offering. 3Com has been in/out of the
core network business a few times as well.
--- Peter van Oene <pvo@usermail.com> wrote:
> At 04:05 PM 3/14/2003 -0500, Paul Lalonde wrote:
> >Hi all,
> >
> >Does anybody know if Cisco currently offers (or
> plans to offer) the
> >equivalent functionality of 3Com's XRN switch
> technology?
> >
> >As I understand it, XRN allows a cluster of
> switches to be configured as a
> >single switch fabric and perform layer 2 and layer
> 3 link resiliency and
> >load balancing across disparate switches and paths.
> >
> >In essence, XRN allows a collection of 3Com
> switches to work together to
> >provide a central spanning tree process and
> EtherChannel-like functionality
> >across distributed links (sort of like Multichassis
> Multilink PPP) while, at
> >the same time, offering VRRP (ie. HSRP) between
> disparate layer 3 switches.
> >
> >I like to think of it as MPLS for a switched LAN
> core.
>
> Are you referring to VPLS? If so, do you have any
> gear that currently
> supports it?
>
> >I know this can be done on a per-VLAN basis, but
> it's tedious and has to be
> >done on every single switch.
> >
> >Does anybody know if Cisco plans to offer something
> like this? In the
> >meantime, I don't know of any other way to get
> multiple Cisco switches to
> >take advantage of multiple layer 2 paths because
> STP runs separately between
> >them.
> >
> >Paul Lalonde
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