Stupid question about managed switches

[Marc G. Fournier]

On Thu, 8 Apr 2004, Don Bowman wrote:

> From: Marc G. Fournier [mailto:scrappy at hub.org]
> >
> > Please excuse this, but my experience with them is zilch ...
> > am going with
> > the HP Procurve 2826(?) Layer2/Layer3 switch, as was
> > suggested, but I'm
> > curious as to how they work ...
> >
> > For instance, I know when I setup a router, I have an IN IP
> > and an OUT IP
> > configured ... but, with a managed switch, what do I have?
> >
> > For instance, right now, I have a default gateway on the
> > providers switch
> > of 200.46.204.1 ... and my servers are .2, .3, .4 and .5 ...
> > if I put a
> > managed switch, vs the unmanaged we have now, between the
> > providers switch
> > and the servers, does my default route then change to be the switch
> > itself?  Or is the 'login part' of the switch thought of the
> > same way as
> > adding just another server to the network, for connectivity purposes?
> >
> > As I said, stupid question, but for someone whose never played with a
> > managed switch before ... :(
> >
> > Thanks ..
>
> In layer-2 mode, its nothing but a hub. It doesn't change your
> default route or anything. Pretend its not there.
>
> you will need a router connected to this switch, and its
> IP will remain your default route (likely).

'k, but I want to use the managed aspect of it to be able to hard code the
port rates (ie. to fix this full-duplex issue initially) as well as be
able to access SNMP so that I can do bandwidth monitoring of external
traffic ... I have SNMP setup on the FreeBSD boxes right now so that I can
see network load per server, but I want to be able to isolate the
'external' traffic from 'internal', by monitoring the specific port that
is connected to the providers switch ...

So, in both cases, I need to assign an IP somewhere, correct?

----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy at hub.org           Yahoo!: yscrappy              ICQ: 7615664