My company recently had an network outage at our colocation facility that is serving our main website. The outage was caused by an upstream switch failure.
I was told by my ISP (who provides us with an air conditioned space, one rack, A/B power and a redundant internet connection) that the issue was caused by an HSRP failure and that some customers were back up in a few minutes when I was down for 45 minutes.
The connection goes ISP switch --> patch panel --> sonicwall firewall --> extreme switch
Since the HSRP failure took place, my ISP want me to add a simple L2 switch to handle the redundant connection. I.E. ---> ISP switch --> patch panel --> L2 switch --> sonicwall firewall --> extreme switch
This confuses me as I have seen many of these setups and never have I provided a switch between my firewall and the patch panel (which I see as the demarc point). Am I crazy?