Transit LAN vs. Individual LANs

>> An argument could be made for individual VLANs to
keep things like b- 
>> cast storms isolated.  But I think the additional
complexity will  
>> cause more problems than it will solve.

> One must keep in mind that human error is the dominant
cause of outages, 
> and since there's not likely to be backhoes running
around in a data 
> center, IMHO the goal should be to remove as many ways
as possible that 
> your coworkers can muck things up.

Individual PTP links means a muckup probably affects only
two devices. 
Switched LANs means a muckup possibly affects all devices
(on one of the 
LANs), and not all of them may detect the problem at the
same time.

pt

--On February 26, 2006 7:53:40 AM -0600 Pete Templin
<peteliststemplin.org> wrote:

> 
> 
>>> An argument could be made for individual VLANs
to keep things like b- 
>>> cast storms isolated.  But I think the
additional complexity will  
>>> cause more problems than it will solve.
> 
>> One must keep in mind that human error is the
dominant cause of outages, 
>> and since there's not likely to be backhoes
running around in a data 
>> center, IMHO the goal should be to remove as many
ways as possible that 
>> your coworkers can muck things up.
> 
> Individual PTP links means a muckup probably affects
only two devices.
> Switched LANs means a muckup possibly affects all
devices (on one of the
> LANs), and not all of them may detect the problem at
the same time.
> 
> pt
Except when you implement the PTP links as VLANs on
switches, it means
a muckup (to use your term) at the switch side can really
muckup your
PTP links in non-obvious and often hard-to-troubleshoot
ways.  There
are tradeoffs either way.  Personally, when interconnecting
routers, I
tend to prefer the PTP hard link and skip the switches. 
Sometimes that's
not feasible.  In those cases, generally, I prefer to go
with rational
groups of routers on VLAN segments rather than synthetic PTP
links.
However, each situation is different and the tradeoffs
should be
considered in light of the particular situation.

Owen



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