Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:45:01 -0700 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> Cc: Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Cool little 100BaseTX switch - they're coming down in price Message-ID: <385F2FFD.CA594829@softweyr.com> References: <199912190410.UAA01049@apollo.backplane.com> <385C789C.DD290597@softweyr.com> <v04210104b484a826ab4b@[128.113.24.47]>
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Garance A Drosihn wrote: > > At 11:18 PM -0700 12/18/99, Wes Peters wrote: > >Matthew Dillon wrote: > > > 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. > > Getting back to the topic of switches, I've recently bought three > different "reasonably cheap" 10/100 switches for some testing. > One thing I would have liked to have had was an option to "mirror" > the traffic of one port on some other port. > [...] but I was wondering how > much one has to fork out before you get extra options like a > port-mirroring capability... Lots more, in terms of dollars. For this, you need at least a managed switch, and probably a smart switch. I know for a fact this one, a 24-port 10Base-T switch with 2 10/100 uplink ports, supports port mirroring and hundreds of other features -- about $1100: http://shopper.cnet.com/shopping/resellers/1,10231,0-11726-311-1459828-3,00.html?tag=st.sh.11726-311-1459828.sort.price For 24 100Base-TX ports, you step up to about $2100: http://shopper.cnet.com/shopping/resellers/1,10231,0-11726-311-794908-3,00.html?tag=st.sh.11726-311-794908.sort.price For more info about both, see: http://www.ind.alcatel.com/enterprise/products/omnistack/ost04.html Note that these are "Layer 3" switches with VLAN support, IP and IPX routing, etc. The per-port prices aren't that different than the simpler managed switches, but the port count tends to be high. Caveat: I work on these things daily. Consider whatever I say about them to be evangelism. Also note that turning on software-dependent features like port mirroring can do terrible things to your throughput if not used judiciously. -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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