[olug] Community Colo Project

[Phil Brutsche]

Bah, this is piddly little stuff; I think you're thinking way too hard
about it. Except for the scale this isn't a whole lot different from
what some of us run in our basements.

If we did this, we would be using enterprise-grade switches. The sort of
switches that have GBIC slots in them ;) The sort of stuff I have
sitting in a corner waiting for me to give away ;)

I have Cisco 3500XLs - 3524XL (24x 10/100, 2x GBIC), 3548XLs (48x
10/100, 2x GBIC), 3508XL (8x GBIC). Cosmetically challenged 1000base-SX
GBICs are free ;) I also have 2950G-24s (24x 10/100, 2x GBIC), 2950G-48s
(48x 10/100, 2x GBIC) and 2948Gs (48x 10/100, 2x GBIC) I could be
convinced to part with.

It might be weird to some people to connect both ethernet ports on the
router to the switch - a 10/100 port and a GBIC on vlan 10 for the ISP,
everything else on VLAN 20 - but we wouldn't have to worry about any
financial outlay. If the switch breaks we'll have downtime regardless.
We could always get a fiber card or three later after we get established.

As for the fiber card, we wouldn't need to spend $500 for a fiber Gig-E
card, if you know what you're looking for you can get them for a lot
less than that:
http://search.ebay.com/280322917964
http://search.ebay.com/110342439831
http://search.ebay.com/130291378047
http://search.ebay.com/140304056203

I wouldn't even worry about which connector the fiber has on it, there
are lots of ways to convert between ST, LC, and SC - couplers, patch
panels, etc.

Dan Clough wrote:
> I've never done anything on this scale before, so one of my (already
> numerous) worries is if we just get a barebones fiber drop from
> Pinpoint.  Won't we need gear built to handle it?  New fiber NICs are
> ludicrously expensive... I've seen upwards of $5000 for the Intel 10G,
> $2k if you're just looking for the transceiver.  Now granted we won't
> ever need to handle a 10G drop (And if we did we sure as hell wouldn't
> use a single Vyatta box) but the 1Gigs are still $400-500 a pop.
> Would we just need to use an SC/LC to 8P8C transceiver, or is a more
> complex setup required?

-- 

Phil Brutsche
phil at brutsche.us