Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2004 11:44:34 -0600 From: "Anthony Anderberg" <ant@hutchtel.net> To: freebsd-net@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Looking for switch recommendations ... Message-ID: <40656922.13723.24183307@localhost> In-Reply-To: <20040326115855.A90406@ganymede.hub.org>
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I just finished evaluating a large number of switches for work and can share my thoughts, although we're still in price negotiations so it'd be unethical to make recommendations. We use Nortel BayStack 350s and Passport 8600s today, and will be buying almost 400 switches of various kinds over the next 3 years. We only use managed switches, having spent too many hours debugging speed/duplex mismatches and other silliness. I tend not to pay much attention to vendor-supplied performance number since there is a lot of "Enron-style" math that can be done to boost ratings. In the small form-factor market I liked: -Allied Telesyn's 8012M Unlike most of the switches in this group it has a fan, but its not too loud. It also seemed to run fine without the fan (nothing drives like a rental!) It's got a modular slot that can accept GBICs or a 1000TX port, otherwise it's got 12 10/100 ports. -Asante's FM2008 is fairly inexpensive and had decent performance for it's 8 ports. A model with a fiber uplink is also available. -Cisco's 2940 is basically a cut-down 2950 and has a number of mounting options, although its list price is twice that of these other small switches. In my "10/100 user uplink" category I liked: -Notel's BayStack 425 which is the least expensive managed switch they make, it's got 4 SFP slots but a cheesy firewire stacking system. -Hewlett Packard's ProCurve 2626 which has 2 SFP slots, 24 ports, and lots of nice features for port mirroring. Someone mentioned the 48 port version called the 2650 earlier. -Cisco's 2950 Which has decent performance and a reasonable price, although I've always thought IOS to be a clunky interface for simple Ethernet switches where not much configuration is required. In the gigabit category I liked: -Hewlett Packard's 2824: which has 20 copper ports and 4 ports that can be either copper or SFP. It's got many of the same features and look and feel as the 2626. -Nortel's 5510 which is their newest model, its got a rich feature set including neat flow and cable management that'll be in an upcoming software release. There is also going to be a PoE version later this year. I also looked at switches from Dell, Extreme, and Foundry, as well as models from each vendor in each category. Dell and Foundry's workgroup switches are both clones of a switch from some other OEM, I'm not sure who. Hewlett Packard's 9300 line is really just Foundry's stuff with HP stickers, they don't even bother to repaint them. I really liked Extreme's core hardware, but thought they were a little too expensive as an edge solution. I'm hopeing to get me hands on Extreme's BlackDiamond 10K platform later this summer, even if it is based on Linux. :-) Hope this helps, anthony
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