[NTLUG:Discuss] OT but don't know where else to ask

[Ralph Green]

On Mon, 2011-07-25 at 23:58 -0500, Leroy Tennison wrote:
> Proprietary hardware has only one NIC.  Would like some redundancy to 
> the network, obvious answer is a four-port hub so that at least it can 
> be connected to two switches (appropriately configured for this 
> arrangement).  That way, if one switch is down there is another path 
> (which is what I'm after so that switch maintenance doesn't cause an 
> outage).  Problem: it's contrary to corporate standard.  Any other 
> solutions you know of that don't look/act/quack like a hub?

Leroy,
  Does it have a USB port?  Maybe, you could add a USB NIC.  They are
not fast, but they are better than nothing for a backup.  Or, use a
serial port(or maybe firewire) as a backup talking to another computer
and then routing to the network.  I don't know enough about this
hardware to suggest much else.  Maybe, you could add a router with
openwrt and multiple NIC.  Plug it directly to the proprietary box and
two NICs from it to 2 switches. The openwrt would be a point of failure,
but a switch outage would not.  I am thinking of something relatively
cheap, like a soekris 4801 to run openwrt.  It is commercial grade, and
has 3 NICs.  It is only 100 MBit, and that could be a problem, depending
on your setup.  I am new to openwrt, but I just setup a soekris 4801
this week, and it works well.
Ralph