Hi before I start, my network is mostly Nortel equipment (Synoptics became Bay Networks became Nortel) of about 1998 vintage (Baystack 350's 450's, accelar 120's amd Business Policy Switches) so there is newer. hopefully more robust Nortel product out there. I am running VoIP connecting 3 PBXes with voice packets having proiority over data packets 1000 nodes, 55 Switches in 45 buildings
, 32 subnets
I like the Optivity switch manager software, it shows me what IS connected, not what I thought was. It shows where mismatches in my network occur VLANs with same VLAN ID but different Names, Spanning Tree Groups with same ID but different Roots, duplex and Multi link trunking mismatches, it meshes with the Java Device Manager software (free) quite well.
the 450 seems to have some difficulties on port 5 when forced to reboot, I often discover it has decided to drop untagged packets. The 450 only has 2 hardware prioritys, while 802.1p defines 8.
The accelar 1200 will not let me tag a Isolated Router Port, so there is no way to send 802.1p information to the next router, each router needs a complex of IP Filters to reestablish a Priority I knew in the last router. Again the 120 only has 2 levels of Priority in hardware, although it tracks 8 in 802.1p (1200 is End of Life, although the 1150 is the same software and components)
The Business Policy Switch has 4 levels of hardware priority, very nice, although the software prefers Diffserv to 802.1p it will do both.
I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.