Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1999 23:18:04 -0700 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com> Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Cool little 100BaseTX switch - they're coming down in price Message-ID: <385C789C.DD290597@softweyr.com> References: <199912190410.UAA01049@apollo.backplane.com>
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Matthew Dillon wrote:
>
> I picked up a nifty little D-Link DSS-5+ 5-port 10/100 switch today
> CompUSA had a 5-port network kit labeled 'DFE-910' which had the
> DSS-5+ and two DFE-530TX+ NIC Cards ('rl' driver), plus cables, for $130.
Warehouse.com sells the Netgear FS105 for $99.99. If you open them up,
don't be surprised to see exactly the same chipset, and perhaps even the
same board. You'd be astonished how many of these commodity items are
OEM'd from the same vendor.
I have a nice, shiny new 8-port 10/100 switch at work, with ATM-155 uplink,
ATM T1/E1 Circuit emulation on the front, and AAL-1 inputs for bridging
your PBX over the same DS3 or OC3 uplink circuit. It costs a bit more than
$130, or at least it will when I get the IP routing software working. ;^)
> It appears to operate quite nicely. I can run all 5 ports at
> 100BaseTX speeds in full-duplex mode and it seems to take whatever
> I throw at it, though I didn't life test it so I don't know what
> it can actually handle. It seems to have sufficient buffering to
> deal with fragmented NFS packets without losing anything so I'm happy.
If you can spare it for a few days, I'll be glad to plug it into a SmartBits
and tell you what it'll REALLY do.
> Prices have fallen a lot in the last year. I'm happy to be able to
> get rid of my HUBs, I was constantly having to deal with packet loss
> when running saturation tests and never able to figure out what
> was causing it.
Switches are a better solution, no doubt about it. They are well worth
the cost, even if you're just trying to pep up an old 10Base-T network.
Investing in 10Base-T switches at this time is a false economy; for only
a few dollars more per port you can get 10/100 switches like yours and
upgrade machines to Fast Ethernet as budget allows.
> Note that buy.com lists a 'DFE-910' kit for around $100, but their
> description of it is that it contains a hub rather then a switch. I
> know what I got at CompUSA was a switch, not a hub, but I don't know
> what you'd get if you bought the DFE-910 part number from buy.com.
Warehouse.com lists the D-Link DSS-5+ as a 5 port auto 10/100 desktop switch
ext pwr (external power, I presume) for $109.99. I suspect that might be
the same as what you got, despite the clash in product nomenclature.
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/
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