Condensed Network Switch Education?

[pkirill]

We are currently using an HP ProCurve 4000m managed swtich. I'm shopping for a gigabit upgrade and I'm leaning towards the Dell 3000 series because of the low cost. But then that's what scares me. I'm not a network harware guru, so I'm looking for a quick education in what makes one managed gigabit switch better than another. To my knowledge the only "features" we are using on the ProCurve are Spanning Tree (Fast) and Port Monitoring - and if you can call speed control (Auto/10/100) a feature - we use that too. No virtual LAN, no fiber. We've got about 46 users and device to put on the switch.

So any thoughts from those more experienced or links to "explanations and definitions" would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Paul

 

[Zen37]

If you have a HP 4000, you should have slots on your switch. Are all your slots used? If not, you could purchase a gigabit slot for your switch, it might end up being less expensive than a new switch.

To answer your question, you basically use the basic layer 2 features of a switch, the major difference with switches varies more in the way you configure the switch. If your Dell switch offers those options and you understand how to configure it, you like the way the GUI of CLI works, then go for it. More so if your shop is a Dell shop.