Which switch to use?

[jdobbs]

Hi,

I was hoping someone could help me out in choosing switches for a new property opening for my company. I've looked around and theres alot to look at. Any suggestions on where to start? We're going to have quiet a few runs so we'll need several switches with 24 ports or so. What's the difference between unmanaged and managed switches? Who is better to look in to 3Com, Linksys, Dell, etc... ? I perfer Linksys but I'm open to suggestions. Is it better to go with say 2 24 port switches or 1 48 port switch? Any help on this matter would be awesome!

Thanks

 

[jimbopalmer]

if I may, let me describe my high-end stackable managed switches, explaining teir good points, then let you decide if those features are worth high end prices.

I bought about 55 Nortel baystack 450 24 port switches in 1998. these can be stacked 8 high, although my largest is 6 high, using a redundant 2.4 gig interconnect cable. An entire stack has one IP address allowing it to be managed as a unit and upgraded as a unit. I only have 25 IP addresses to know and only upgrade 25 devices.

My 450s are spred along a 10 mile property in the largest 20 buldings of the 45 I manage. (The baystack 350 is a nonstackable version, in buildings were I do not expect growth, some buildings use older 10 meg hubs were they have 6 or fewer PCs, all are managed.) Last weekend I upgraded the version level of the firmware for all the 350 and 450s from my desk. I routinely get port statistics from my desk. This week management wanted a complete inventory of PCs. I was able to identify the number of devices and manufacturer by MAC address in each building.

The Java based GUI device manager runs on many java clients , each stack has it's own Web Page, and you can use telnet to manage them via text menus, so you are not tied to one presentation or a 'magic' console, any computer you sit at can be your management location. (You can restrict this of course, but I don't)

Each 450 can have a single Gig link, or multiple 100 meg fiber links in addition to the 24 10/100 copper ports the 450 allows multiple VLANs, QOS and two level priority (more modern switches would have more than 2 levels of priority in hardware)

if you need 48 ports one 48 port switch is better than two 24 port switches, although stacking eleminates some of the advantage. the 450 stack cable allows 2.4 gig of traffic internally to the stack, if every packet of every port for two 24 port switches went to the OTHER switch, that would use up the 2.4 gig in just a stack of 2 if every device was talking full blast.


I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.

 

[g6udx]

You could do far worse than consider HP ProCurve. We standardised on it some while back and rarely buy anything else.

 

[Grenage]

Big fans of HP ProCurve here. They are excellent for scalability and ease of use, aswell as being very well priced.

I myself have not had a chance to play with many high end switches so cannot compare.