Stupid question about managed switches

[Bruce M Simpson]

On Thu, Apr 08, 2004 at 02:20:49PM -0300, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> '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?

I generally just cheat by assigning a link-scope address to the switch
and to my management station connected to the same switch, thus obviating
the need for a router. Generally however the management station has to
be in a certain VLAN to access the SNMP features of the switch, this is
usually VLAN 1 (at least on 3Com).

BMS