3Com o Cisco Switch: What is the best choice ?

[Bogdan Costescu]

On Mon, 21 Feb 2000, Andrés Felipe CALDERÓN wrote:

> or, 12  switches 3Com SuperStack® 3 Switch 3300 XM  (24 Ports) ,  our
> provider said that the switches can be stacked together using a matrix
> cable for two units (what does "stack using a matrix cable" mean?)

Actually, IIRC up to 4 units can be stacked with the matrix cable(s). But
you have to take into consideration that the matrix port has a limited
bandwidth (1 Gb, IIRC) compared with the backplane one (2.4 Gb), so if you
plan to use the 2 connected switches as a single one, you have a
bottleneck. If you can configure your cluster or convince your users to
never run jobs that use nodes connected on both sides of the matrix
connection, you shouldn't have any problems. I'm using in a cluster 2 24
ports switches 2-ways channel-bonded, the inter-switch communication
being only NFS and rsh/ssh (no MPI) and I'm very pleased with this setup.

Sincerely,

Bogdan Costescu

IWR - Interdisziplinaeres Zentrum fuer Wissenschaftliches Rechnen
Universitaet Heidelberg, INF 368, D-69120 Heidelberg, GERMANY
Telephone: +49 6221 54 8869, Telefax: +49 6221 54 8868
E-mail: Bogdan.Costescu at IWR.Uni-Heidelberg.De