On Tue, 1 Jul 1997, Robert Bowman wrote:
On the inverse, routers--if designed properly, can be 10 times better because of lower overhead, cost effectiveness, etc. I don't think this is going to be a debate that one will win in this forum. There are many router only based backbones, such as ours, Digex, etc. Then there are the many on the fr/router side.. just as "effective" one might say..
There is nothing inherently good or bad about switches either. The problem comes in, as Sean stated far more eloquently than I can, when layer 2 and layer 3 each have their own intelligence and do not work together. This is probably the single most problematic part of the layer 2 + layer 3 designs I've seen implemented. While this has in large part caused by the lack of correct tools to build such a beast, when you are trying to tie a necktie with two hands and your left and right hands don't coordinate, you sometime end up hanging yourself instead. -dorian