RE: [MLUG] Switches

[Rick Buford <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

I've had pretty good look with the NetGear switches, both an 8-port at home
and some 16-port ones we had at work (now replaced with Cisco). The 8 port
is a very "home user" oriented switch, and the 16's, while rackmountable,
were still unmanaged dumb switches. If you're talking about a non
"production" LAN, I'd go with something fairly simple. If you're actually
planning on spending some moolah, go Cisco...Cisco rules...  =)

Rick 
Linux is very user friendly, It's just very particular about who it makes
friends with

-----Original Message-----
From: EMAIL:PROTECTED
[mailto:EMAIL:PROTECTED]On Behalf Of Spurling, Shannon 
Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2001 9:57 PM
To: EMAIL:PROTECTED '
Subject: RE: [MLUG] Switches


It's not just as simple as Hub or Switch. There are different levels of
switches. The main difference is the amount of intelegence that goes into
the device. That's the main issue in cost. There are the new sub $200 dollar
switches that are made specificly for the home user market. These are cheap
and dumb. The next level would be the sub $1000 switches. These guys are the
low end of the "Manageable switch" types. Normaly you don't find these
outside of small offices or business. They add the ability to manage what
machine is allowed to connect to what ports, and what kind of broadcast
traffic is flooded to what ports. Next is the sub $5000 switches. These guys
are usualy high density solutions that allow much more configurability and
the deffinition of Vlans and stuff like that. They are used alot for group
switches for larger companies and organizations. The next level is what is
called the "Campus" or "Enterprise" level switches. These things are cool.
Multi-Gigabit backplanes with redundant power systems. The things are
expensive. The cost per port can be in the hundereds of dollars, but the
things are usualy bullet proof. This is what is used to build an ethernet
backbone, in most cases, because they have so much redundancy and capacity.
Just try and get some support people to understand why you need to buy them
though. It's hard to convince someone who has been using manageable hubs for
years why something like this is a good thing ( the word "Budget" comes up a
lot :-). It's kind of why the sub $5000 switch market has been doing so well
lately. 
Any how, to answer your question. My recomendation would be to tier a few
hubs or lower quality high density switches off of a higher quality smaller
density switch. Get the most bang for the buck. On the low cost market it
can be hit or miss. I think Linksys and Netgear are decent. I've actually
had surprising success with some of the off brands you find at Outpost and
some of the other online vendors. Mainly, watch what you spend. The cheap
ones are good and cheap, the expensive ones are excelent and expensive, but
there is a big gap where performance dosen't increase like it should for the
amount of money you spend.

Shannon 

-----Original Message-----
From: Neil Bradshaw
To: EMAIL:PROTECTED
Sent: 6/2/01 8:59 PM
Subject: [MLUG] Switches

Does anyone have any recommendations for switches? I want to get one or
two of them, but I've never really bought one. I just use my trusty hub.

There's a good chance that my aparment next year may be handling
anywhere
from eight to 15 computers, maybe 20, who knows? I need switches for the
DMZ and the PC LAN.

I was thinking BayStack or Nortel, but I've never shopped for
switches. I've always gotten by just fine with my hub.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Neil

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