System information

Chapter 1. Planning interoperability and migration

Migration takes place when moving from one technology to another, or from

one generation of equipment to another, or from one brand of products to

another. Most customer organizations have gone through several migrations

of their network. Migration of networking technology is desirable to provide

additional functions, increased capacity, or improved cost efficiency to meet

business requirements.

Migration is nothing new. Most organizations have been through several

migrations of networking technology. Migrations take place when moving from

one technology to another or from one generation of equipment to another,

irrespective of the brand.

Similarly, most networks are made up of diverse brands, for example modems

from one manufacturer, multiplexors from another, and controllers or routers

from still a third manufacturer, or hubs and switches from different

manufacturers.

The IBM - Cisco alliance prompts the process of planning for increased

interoperability between diverse brands and eventually for a future migration.

Whether this planning is necessary for the short term or for the long term, the

alliance is an opportunity for organizations to review and consolidate current

plans.

The research and laboratory exercises that were done to support the

recommendations in this guide showed that in most cases standards-based

products really do work together. For the most part, we found that

interoperability was easily accomplished. It is our opinion that customers may

be able to take advantage of such interoperability when applied with caution.

In some cases during the course of testing interoperability, IBM Networking

Hardware Division and Cisco System developers encountered minor

problems resulting from implementation differences. In most cases, these

problems were readily fixed, and in other cases we document our

recommendations to avoid problems rising from limitations of interoperability.

Customers should plan their future networking strategies in conjunction

with IBM Global Services. Contact information can be found at

http://www.ibm.com/planetwide. In the following sections of this book we

detail our recommendations in this respect.

Important