On Sun, Apr 22, 2001 at 08:41:38PM -0700, Mike Fedyk wrote: > My concern was that for a hotel with 1000s of rooms that a switch port for > each room would be a very high cost, but what you described looks like an > even higher investment. Which makes my argument pretty much moot.
The cost of a 96 port Cisco 6509 switch (which could be upgraded to nearly another 400 ports) is about $80,000 (Cisco discounts vary wildly, this is ballpark). As a CORE router, this is pretty inexpensive. Peppering 2948 (48 port) units at a cost of $8000 or so with backhauls to the 6509 gets the cost down even more. 2924 (24 ports) are $1200 or so. You really do need a smart switching that supports some sort of VLAN or Private LAN, such that each port's broadcasts don't go to any port other than to the gateway. Additionally, assuming $10 per port per day when in use, a 500 room hotel would bring in enough money to recover the cost inside a year, even assuming modest occupancy rates. Put that hotel in the Bay Area or popular techie vacation spots (Montery), and whalla. Depending on the cost and marketing, this could be considered a "lost leader" by the hotel, something required to attract business, but not a staple money maker. I'm quite sure a half million over 5 years on advertising is chump change for some of the larger hotels. The Cisco terminology is "Private VLAN Edge", with the IOS command being "port protected" in conf-interface. see http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/voice/ics7750/swconfig/c_bps.htm#xtocid612530 also, the page specifically states: Some applications require that no traffic be forwarded by the Layer 2 protocol between ports on the same switch. In such an environment, there is no exchange of unicast, broadcast, or multicast traffic between ports on the switch, and traffic between ports on the same switch is forwarded through a Layer 3 device such as a router. The 2900 series supports the "port protected" command... meaning you could probably get away with one "big switch" like a 2948 or 6509, and all the rest be little 2924s. The Cisco Private VLAN Edge is the big hairy layer 2 problem solver. Now the only issues are at layer 3... and we've got the source to that problem. :) A specialized linux kernel, set to respond to all ARP requests as itself, and maintain a MAC to IP table for return packet traffic (both of these _may_ be kernel options at present) could easily handle and masquerade traffic for any number of IP streams coming at it. The only tough parts (and maybe very tough) is making sure you're doing MAC -> MASQUERADED IP decisions rather than INTERNAL IP -> MASQUERADED IP, as there could be multiple 'internal ips', as previously discussed. -- Ted Deppner http://www.psyber.com/~ted/
