From: Daniel Sheedy (dansheedy@gmx.net)
Date: Wed Mar 24 2004 - 02:46:58 GMT-3
G'day,
I have a little problem, and thought I would toss it in here. It seems basic
but I can't seem to find any product like it on the market.
At the moment we have a project reconstructing a network for a local
college/education centre. They do courses about everything from Management
through to CCNP. One of the requirements is that each computer room is
capable of being seperated from the network, in the event that they wish to do
something not particularly network friendly. (like run their own domain in a
MCSE course.)
At the moment, each room is its own VLAN, and contains 1 * 24 port switch.
This switch is feed by a cable which goes like this...
Access switch uplink port -> to wall socket A -> small .5 metre cable from
wall socket A to wall socket B -> wall socket B to distribution switch.
So, the trainer/teacher can just disconnect this small cable, and the uplink
is suddenly gone, seperating the room from the network. However, sometimes
when they go to reconnect it, it goes into the wrong two sockets. (or maybe
it is student monkey busines...)
So, is it possible to implement some other idea to be able to seperate a room
or a vlan, without physically removing a cable?
The users would have to be able to do it themselves ideally.
I was thinking, wouldnt it be great if there was some type of switch that you
could put in between two cat5 cables, and it made it on/off. Like the little
uplink button of Switches of yore. Press the button... link... press the
button again... no link!
The layer 3 switches at the moment are Extremenetwork switches, and they will
be replaced in the near future, as they are only leased. So if the idea
involves some idea that must be implemented on a central switch, than this
could be taken into consideration too.
The cable idea seems too primative, but if Im barking up the wrong tree
thinking there is a better idea... please tell me so.
Thanks fellas!
Dan Sheedy
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Thu Apr 01 2004 - 08:15:46 GMT-3