Tuesday, December 15, 2009

ten steps of small LAN design

A few days ago I posted an amusing comment on Ivan Pepelnjak's always excellent Cisco IOS Hints and Tricks blog, and he found it funny enough to create a separate post. I'll repeat my ten step program here for future reference:

  1. Build everything at layer 2 because "it's simpler".
  2. Scale a little.
  3. Things start breaking mysteriously. Run around in circles. Learn about packet sniffers and STP.
  4. Learn about layer 3 features in switches you already own. Start routing.
  5. Scale more.
  6. Things start breaking mysteriously. Learn about TCAMs. Start wishing for NetFlow.
  7. Redesign. Buy stuff.
  8. Scale more.
  9. VMWare jockeys start asking about bridging across the WAN.
  10. Enroll in hair loss program.

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