Thursday, October 24, 2013

The next big project

The next big project, kind of.
This next project was just plain fun.  The team had to replace a Cisco 1700 series router with its blazing fast 6Mb (4 bundled T1 lines) up-link, with a Cisco 3750X layer 3 switch with 2 1Gb links to our fiber transport ring. 
After my colleague coordinated the fiber cut and fiber run to the facility, it was my responsibility to configure the new 3750X.  As this new switch would be sitting between two existing nodes on our fiber transport ring we decided to configure the uplink to the core on the 3750x as if it were the other node. This would ensure no changes needed to be done at the core node. On the down link to the other existing node a new /30 address was configured.  Once the new /30 address was added to the existing node and the EIGRP network statements were corrected for the new /30 network,  and the removal of the origin /30 network, all links were up.
One small item we needed to pay special attention to was the fiber transceiver. The distance between nodes is over 16,000 feet so we used CWDM 1590 SFPs  in point to point mode.

Anytime we can save 3500.00 dollars a month and provide the users with better performances, it’s a win, win (just plain fun).