Re: Machine Registration
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/
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