Cisco 3620: wich IOS to choose

You are asking pretty basic stuff from it, something they were doing quite readily 13-15 years ago. Anything should be fine..

Okay, 64k of DRAM, 32k of Flash. As long as your IOS image fits in the DRAM and flash you have, you're set.

Whichever, Cisco had that kind of feature set nailed down decades ago..

The IK903S6 is a superset of IS. Since its newer, and would fit into your RAM/Flash, I'd go with it just because its newer. Even if you aren't going to use the crypto features of it (would be pretty slow on a 3620), there could be some bugs fixed.

Overall, its not going to matter.

RAM isn't consumed by routing, its all fixed allocation buffers upon boot. You only use up RAM for dynamic protocols like EIGRP/OSPF/BGP/etc. etc.

Hello doug, thank you for your answer. My answers are below:

"Doug McIntyre" ha scritto nel messaggio news:4cd05aa4$0$87582$ snipped-for-privacy@newsreader.iphouse.net...

Whichever, Cisco had that kind of feature set nailed down decades ago..

The latest 12.2 is really light, but the 12.3 has SSH, since the 12.2 is IP/PLUS it is light and has the minimum feature set to support vlans.

If I could fine the latest 12.3 IP/PLUS I will go with that. I don't like to use big IOS if they are not needed.

With routing in wich way I could use the spare RAM? Maybe with buffers?

Thanks

It's not really going to matter what IOS you use Cisco routers have been routing packets for a long time:-)

If you are internet facing you might want to check out any security bugs.

I suppose you could choose one that was not deferred and was currently availabe.

I would choose the most recent one that was not T or any other letters and met the feature requirements.

My view on memory is that if not using big routing domains (lots of routers) with dynamic routing and you have not got big routing tables is pretty much "if it will boot it will run". It is also (as I see you have) worth turning off proxy arp in case you get huge memory eating arp cache. Once upon I time we had an internet facing switch that crashed every year until we figured it out.

Obviously you need a bit of spare memory for vty sessions and the like.

If you want specific advice on memory on a particular release post the first three lines of the show mem command with the release running and details of the recommended memory.

One thing you don't mention is the throughput you expect to see. By modern standards a 3620 will be pretty poor.

Oh, turning off logging console is good practise since that is very CPU intensive.

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It's not really going to matter what IOS you use Cisco routers have been routing packets for a long time:-)

This router is an internal one that is not directly internet facing. It routes packet from the users to a 3745 QoS router, and then to internet. It is not directly accessible from outside.

The 12.2 is currently discontinued.

This is mainline (not-T)

What throughput should I expect?

logging buffered 4096 notifications no logging console no logging trap no logging monitor

Is ok now?

thank you

Do you have any particular reason for putting such an ancient box in a production environment? Are you on a zero budget?

When your only use is to route between a network and a vlan trunk I would advise getting a low-end L3 routing switch. It will outperform the 3620 by a factor of 100.

Hello

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Elia S. wrote:

Well, I need a box that routes only, I have plenty of old box here sleeping in my depot :) A choice between one C3620, one C2651XM, some 2650 (not XM) and 1700s

When the router will be in difficulties, I will put another one in GLBP :)

I dont have a L3 switch here :(

maybe an HP 2626

IIRC, for a 3620, somewhere on the order of 20Mbps-30Mbps in the setup you are proposing.

Of the boxes you later list, this would be the "fastest" one. Although again something that is over 13 years old isn't exactly the fastest thing out there.

Compared to modern IOS, anything that can fit into 32k is super lightweight, being a tiny percentage of the size in current use..

You couldn't use the spare RAM for routing buffers. The buffer allocations are fairly fixed, with tiny tweaks allowed. Using more RAM gains you nothing.

Yes a HP 2626 would be fine. Or if you buy it new, a HP 2610-24 for example.

There are also cheaper alternatives available e.g. from 3com, but now that 3com has been bought by HP it might be that they are merging product lines.

We are using a 3com 4500G which is also offering L3 routing and is less expensive than the HP line, but HP is concealing the 3com product line from their site so maybe it will not be available much longer...

Switches like this can be configured with multiple VLANs that are each on a different IP subnet, and can IP route between the subnets using static routes.

Often good enough for a situation like you seem to have, and much faster than a router of similar pricing, because they operate at network wire speed. For a 3620 you are looking at a routing performance around 10 megabit/s, while the switch will do 1 gigabit/s no sweat.

"Rob" ha scritto nel messaggio news: snipped-for-privacy@xs8.xsall.nl...

I have an HP2626 here with the latest firmware on it, I will begin configuring it this morning.

So I have this situation:

UPLINK port (to a QoS router where all the VLANS go as a default route)

VLAN2 172.16.2.254/24 VLAN3 172.16.3.254/24 VLAN4 172.16.4.254/24

If I set a default route on the switch to route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 to 10.0.0.1 I should be ok, since I need that each VLAN goes upwards to the 10.0.0.1 and I am not interested now in inter-vlan routing (I mean if 172.16.2.20 reaches

From the QoS router at 10.0.0.1 I have static routes on it as:

ip route 172.16.2.0 255.255.255.0 10.0.0.11 (the switch IP) and so on for each subnet.

Will it work?

Around 10mbit is enough for the beginning :)

No you don't need any additional routes for this case. The directly accessible interfaces are automatically routed, you need routes only for the default gateway and for any networks that are reachable via other routers/switches external to the switch.

Yes that will work.

You will have a couple of VLAN defs like this: vlan 1 name "UPLINK" ip address 10.0.0.11 255.255.255.240 exit vlan 2 name "VLAN2" ip address 172.16.2.254 255.255.255.0 exit

then the IP routing like: ip routing ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 10.0.0.1

We have good experiences with the switches routing like that.

Hello Rob I have just tested this conf in my lab:

Running configuration:

-------------------------------------------- ; J4900A Configuration Editor; Created on release #H.10.83

hostname "ProCurve Switch 2626" snmp-server contact " snipped-for-privacy@spadhausen.com" snmp-server location "HQ Bagnacavallo (RA)" max-vlans 16 time timezone 1 interface 1 flow-control exit interface 2 flow-control exit interface 3 flow-control exit interface 4 flow-control exit interface 5 flow-control exit interface 6 flow-control exit interface 7 flow-control exit interface 8 flow-control exit interface 9 flow-control exit interface 10 flow-control exit interface 11 flow-control exit interface 12 flow-control exit interface 13 flow-control exit interface 14 flow-control exit interface 15 flow-control exit interface 16 flow-control exit interface 17 flow-control exit interface 18 flow-control exit interface 19 flow-control exit interface 20 flow-control exit interface 21 flow-control exit interface 22 flow-control exit interface 23 flow-control exit interface 24 flow-control exit interface 25 flow-control exit interface 26 flow-control exit ip default-gateway 10.0.0.1 sntp server 192.43.244.18 ip routing timesync sntp sntp unicast snmp-server community "public" vlan 1 name "DEFAULT_VLAN" untagged 1-7,11-17,20-24,26 ip address 172.16.0.100 255.255.254.0 no untagged 8-10,18-19,25 ip igmp exit vlan 2 name "ROCKET_HQ" untagged 8 ip address 172.16.2.254 255.255.255.0 tagged 2 ip igmp exit vlan 3 name "TRAVERSARA" ip address 172.16.3.254 255.255.255.0 tagged 3 ip igmp exit vlan 4 name "CASALBONI" ip address 172.16.4.254 255.255.255.0 tagged 4 ip igmp exit vlan 5 name "VLNV_PONTE" ip address 172.16.5.254 255.255.255.0 tagged 5 ip igmp exit vlan 6 name "BONCELLINO" ip address 172.16.6.254 255.255.255.0 tagged 6 ip igmp exit vlan 7 name "MEZZANO" ip address 172.16.7.254 255.255.255.0 tagged 7 ip igmp exit vlan 256 name "MG_LAN" untagged 9,25 no ip address tagged 24 ip igmp exit vlan 255 name "MG_WAN" untagged 10 ip address 172.16.255.254 255.255.255.0 ip igmp exit vlan 257 name "QOS_NETWORK" untagged 18-19 ip address 10.0.0.11 255.255.255.240 exit fault-finder bad-driver sensitivity high fault-finder bad-transceiver sensitivity high fault-finder bad-cable sensitivity high fault-finder too-long-cable sensitivity high fault-finder over-bandwidth sensitivity high fault-finder broadcast-storm sensitivity high fault-finder loss-of-link sensitivity high fault-finder duplex-mismatch-HDx sensitivity high fault-finder duplex-mismatch-FDx sensitivity high ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 10.0.0.1 password manager

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Some questions: it is useful to set ip igmp filtering ? According to the docs, yes. Will it give additional work to the switch?

What routing througput should I expect from this switch?

The full specs are here:

We are not using igmp on our network so I did not study this topic... It will probably give processor load but if this is a problem I cannot tell.

I have tested with our 3com 4500G and I could not saturate it with two Dell servers with gigabit card. I.e. the transfer rate with the switch in between was the same no matter if it was routing or only switching. Of course the specs also tell that but it never hurts to try :-)

I think it is the same with the HP. We have those HP 2626 switches only with a 100 Mbit trunk inbetween them, and we have no problem to saturate the trunk. I did not test those at 1 gigabit.

They specify 9.6 Gbps routing/switching capacity, so with a few ports in use you should not be able to saturate it.

Basically what these devices do is use a processor route lookup for the first packet in a stream and then use the switch hardware to forward the remainder of the packets directly without processor intervention. I.e. the same as when using it as a switch only, except that it now switches on IP addr instead of MAC addr.

It is WAY faster than what you get with a 3620...

Thank you for your suggestion, I definitely will choose HP2626 as routing beast :)

Thank you!

freelance writer