Stupid question about managed switches

[Wes Peters]

On Wednesday 07 April 2004 21:23, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> 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 ... :(

There are managed switches, and then there are routing switches.  Managed 
simply means there is a processor on the box that can manage some aspect of 
the switch; in some cases this is as simple as being able to turn ports on 
and off and reset the switch.

Routing switches employ virtual routers to route between the VLANs managed 
by the switch.  The usual way to do this is to assign an IP address to the 
virtual router in the "normal" IP address range of each VLAN.  The router 
then routes between these virtual interfaces in the normal manner.  

I can't speak to the insides of the HP equipment, but Xylan/Alcatel used a 
modified version of the Net/2 TCP/IP stack running on VxWorks in the 
management processor.

-- 

        Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?

Wes Peters                                               wes at softweyr.com