switches?

[ylancantho]

Every room where I work has only 1 port. Now, the boss wants to install a networked color printer in one room. There is no more port available to put the printer on the network. What is the best solution? Should I buy a switch to make this work?
If so, what kind of switch should I buy?
The network is Novell, Microsoft and Mac.
I am a novice to switches.

Regards

 

[duster123]

a cisco 2950 will do the job

 

[duster123]

The thing also is a switch should be located in a secure area you dont want to put your cisco switch on the floor in a room. so i would suggest you contact an electricain and have him drop a few lines and patches in the room so you can connect devices to the switch from a server room. you dont want to have your equipment all over the place. moreover, an employee could just snatch the switch and take it home.

 

[jneiberger]

Buy a cheap $35 dollar 5-port switch online somewhere a be done with it. There's no sense in spending several hundred dollars to fix a problem that can be fixed so cheaply.

 

[vipergg]

If you want to do it the cheap way and you only have a couple of connections in a office then buy a switch . If you are like a lot of us inhere and do this for a living then then sticking a switch in a office or on the floor is unacceptable practice and is against all security policies...

 

[ylancantho]

Thanks for everyone's advice.

 

[chieftan]

Depends on future capacity requirements.

If all you want is to connect a printer, then just buy a cheap little 4 port switch, however, if you feel that you will have future expansion then you need to start looking at higher capacity switches (and even then it depends on what they will be used for).

8 port Netgear - cheap, but only use if the throughtput is not going to be great (in my experience the ports fail when too many packets are throughput - due to the lack of CPU and Buffering capability on the netgears - hence the cheap price)
Cisco catalyst (2950 - as suggested) - more expensive but will be a good future proof switch.
Extreme summit - same as the cisco but maybe a bit cheaper
HP Procurve - same again

As can be seen it is all down to preference and what you want the switch to do....

 

[jneiberger]

Based on the original post, it sounded like each location only had one data drop. It didn't appear to be a switch capacity problem. If the problem is a lack of data drops, you either need to add switch capacity in the rooms themselves (using the existing drop as a trunk port) or run more cable drops to the rooms.