Another feature common to all four vendors is 802.1x support on edge switches. Although 802.1x is an authentication protocol originally developed to allow user authentication on Ethernet switch ports, it has been adopted for use with wireless access points, which cannot physically deny access to a wireless network. Only recently has 802.1x been embraced by switch vendors.
Overall, we were pleased with the amenities offered to C2G. The vendors support most of the features we sought; among these features are extensive VLAN support and standards-based multicast, which more than half of the readers responding to our poll have implemented or plan to install this year.
We requested pricing based on four scenarios: with 100-Mbps Ethernet ports in the wiring closet; with gigabit ports in the wiring closet; with 100-Mbps Ethernet ports in the wiring closet and PoE; and with gigabit ports in the wiring closet and PoE. The lowest-priced proposal was Alcatel's 100-Mbps setup at $268,275. Unfortunately, Alcatel didn't provide a 10 Gigabit quote, which in part accounted for the lower pricing.
The highest-priced solution, at $1,194,265, was Foundry's gigabit setup with PoE, followed by Enterasys' proposal, at $1,066,284. These were both chassis-based. The Foundry pricing scenario did take some liberties with our design, combining several wiring closets to reduce the number of chassis--if wiring plans has still been in the design stage this would have been a good suggestion, but that's a big "if" for a vendor to assume. Foundry also provided a much more affordable stackable solution for gigabit in the closet, at $654,865. The stackable setup lacked some features of the chassis solutions but did include Layer 2 and Layer 3 QoS as well as 802.1x support. Each stackable switch was connected to a Foundry chassis in each building with all the bells and whistles.
We were curious as to how much PoE would cost and were pleased to discover that it added only about $20,000, or roughly $20 per port--pretty insignificant considering the numbers we're throwing around.
