BES1020 switches

[mrdom]

Hi everyone: We have a small network: 12 PC's, a few access points, and will soon be adding an IP phone system, which will operate about 15 IP phones. We're looking into PoE switches, and have an opportunity to pick up a few BES 1020-48's and 24's for our two buildings.

I've done lots of configurations with unmanaged switches, but this would be my first application using a managed switch.

I was hoping to get the board's input on these switches, and if they are a good choice. Because we're on the smaller end of things, I'm thinking that we wouldn't need to get into the VLANs, but rather make sure that we have QoS configured properly to allow voice traffic to have priority on the network.

We would have one switch in a remote building, connected through a tunnel to the other switch in our main wiring room via Cat6. Then, a plug into our Cisco router.

Are these difficult switches to configure for our application? I'm pretty knowledgeable and have set up lots of different routers - would these be just as easy? The configuration will most likely fall to me.

Would there be other PoE switches that we might consider which would perhaps fit our needs and be a bit less robust?

I'm grateful for your comments and feedback!

 

[biv343]

It's been a while since I worked on the BES switches. They didn't last long and didn't have a very good track record as far as reliability is concerned. Nortel was giving them away free with a BCM purchase years ago. I replaced virtually every one we installed due to power supplies failing. If you can get them for a good price and have a spare or two around, it might be worth the roll of the dice.

If you're looking at the Avaya line of switches, I'd recommend looking at the 3500 or 4500 series switches. Otherwise pretty much any managed POE switch would work in your environment.

 

[norstarboy125]

What model VoIP system were you looking to install? Nortel/Avaya?

Charm City Communications

http://www.charmcitycommunications.com

 

[mrdom]

we're probably going with a UCx, as we want to upgrade to some IP phones (Nortel 1140's), but we also want to keep several of our existing digital sets. This will be the most cost-effective for us. Can someone recommend a 24-port POE gigabit switch that would be a good fit for us? We'll be using the built-in switches on the phones to plug in for phone and data. I'm sure there's a better option out there. I've been looking at some HP switches ... there are a few that look pretty good.