Neil Croft wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:
 NC>> per hubbed segment and the 3174s on 16meg T/R with a then
 MB> Considering your reference to 3174 boxes, I would have to question the
 MB> wisdom of your current upgrade plans.  I certainly hope that IBM has
 NC> Note that the 3174s are staying on T/R. In the good old days
 NC> we were in the fortunate position of having as many IP
 NC> addresses as we liked so we routed everything and used
 NC> routers to convert between T/R and Ethernet. When we merged
 NC> with our new corporate network following outsourcing (Just
 NC> before I joined the company), we had to go for a switched
 NC> lan due to a smaller IP range. We bought a Xylan
 NC> translational switch and I wouldn't recommend one to my
 NC> worst enemy. It's been nothing but grief.
Saving IP addresses has to be one of the dumbest reasons to buy equipment.  
Messing with IP masquerading and such might make sense for a home network, 
but it is an insane practice for a corporate network.  IP switching is a 
reasonable technology, but it is not intended to be used to solve a shortage 
of real IP addresses.
If you are as stuck as you say, either politically or economically, then one 
approach would be to firewall your department from others within the 
enterprise.  That's hardly the most intelligent approach, either, but at 
least you could get away with freely assigning private (RFC1918) addresses.
IP addresses don't cost anything, you know.
 
-- Mike
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