in need of router ssoftware with dot1q, vtp, etc

puter · 07-03-2007, 01:42 PM

as an intern at a university i've been given the opportunity to play with some cisco switches
unfortunately i don't have access to a cisco router, which means i can't do fun things like trunking etc.
my boss told me i can turn a pc into a router, but looking around at the some of the available software it doesn't appear anything is going to be able to handle vtp or dot1q
any suggestions?

acid_kewpie · 07-05-2007, 02:21 AM

zebra and quagga emulate ios as strcitly as possible, but I *doubt* you'll be able to use vtp (which is shit anyway, don't use it...) as it's a cisco proprietary protocol, same for igrp / eigrp and others. of course you can still do anything, well most things, that zebra will do without the app itself, as much of it is just pulling strings, e.g. 802.1q is totally possible on just a standard linux machine, as you shoudl expect it to be.

this should be useful.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-emu/

puter · 07-06-2007, 09:11 AM

thanks a lot for that link
also, if i'm to not use vtp, how do i get vlan information to all devices on the network?

acid_kewpie · 07-08-2007, 12:12 PM

you do it manually. the point is it's very easy to add a switch to an existing network without permission. it's then very easy to add vtp to it and then get direct acess to *every* vlan in the company or whatever. you can use vtp pruning and such, but that just increases the admin overhead anyway, so do yourself a favour and outside of certification, forget vtp exists. you go buy a switch from nortel or foundry or whoever, and you won't have vtp there anyway...

puter · 07-13-2007, 09:26 AM

thanks a lot for that link
i have successfully made a linux router with vlan support
and it actually works