Re: Default Gateways

[[e-mail]]

     We sell a large number of our switching products and many of our 
     customers are seeing that switching is allowing them to remove routing 
     from their networks. This, in effect, flattens the network to one 
     large network. 
     
     While routing does a good job for keeping traffic localized, routers 
     in general are a bottleneck for networks that regularly 
     intercommunicate with each other. Switches eliminate this bottleneck 
     because they provide traffic management without creating a bottleneck. 
     
     Without getting into the cons and pros of routers and switches, we 
     have several very large customers with thousands of host computers. 
     They have gone with a switch environment and are removing their 
     routers from their network. 
     
     Since the routers have been removed from the network, it is up to the 
     host to perform its own gateway functions. Class a and class b subnets 
     are not so much an issue as class c subnets are.
     
     Many of our customers use an intermix of class c subnet structures to 
     help manage their workgroups. With only 255 host available in each 
     class c subnet, multiple subnets are obviously needed. Because the 
     network is flat they need to have every DHCP client use itself as a 
     default gateway so that they can talk to other clients. 
     
     In summary, we have customers using flat networks, different subnets, 
     no routers, and are experiencing communication problems because DHCP 
     (under NT) doesn't support default gateways. 
     
     Regards,
     Bret Clark
     Product Management
     Cabletron Systems