At approximately 4pm EST my cisco 3550 decided it did not want to work as intended anymore and prevented my entire office of 100 people the ability to browse the internal network, the Internet AND make any calls on our fancy IP phone system.
I spent 4 1/2 hours on the phone with my corporate cisco engineer first diagnosing the problem and then configuring a backup switch (which I thankfully had on the floor collecting dust) to do the job of the old switch. Thankfully everything is working and only a few people will be inconvenienced in the morning as I rewire the network to let them have access to the outside world.
In the morning I plan on ordering a replacement 3550 or it’s equivalent and then using the catalyst 4650 now doing the job as a hot backup.
Overall, good things came of a potentially nasty situation.