The school has been advised to replace our 10/100 switches with Gigabit switches. Currently I have 1 x 48 port managed and 2 x 24 port unmanaged, all are 3Com.
What manufacturers would you recommend that I look at?
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The school has been advised to replace our 10/100 switches with Gigabit switches. Currently I have 1 x 48 port managed and 2 x 24 port unmanaged, all are 3Com.
What manufacturers would you recommend that I look at?
HP all the way
Any model in particular?Quote:
Originally Posted by MicrodigitUK
HP Procurve +1!
Network of Choice - HP ProCurve Networking
@leco: HP all the way... 2600 series is nice. Go for managed because you're bound to need it eventually and you'll kick yourself.
I do have to question the recommendation though. Are you planning on linking the switches via 10Gbps links or multiple port trunks? Will you be upgrading your server NICs too? There's little point upgrading the endpoint connections if that's not your bottleneck to start with.
I would also recommend HP Procurve. Used them in my previous job in industry and replaced a hodgepodge of old 3com and cisco unmanaged 10/100 switches as soon as I could in my current job in education. Replaced seven switches with two HP Procurve 4100gls (current equivalent model is the 4200vl I think) for approx £12,000 (about 4 years ago) with all the slots filled with Gigabit cards giving me 280 available ports, which works out at about £43 per port.
But again as already mentioned you also need to look at your servers and client computers as if they don't have Gigabit cards then they would also need upgrading so that cost would also have to be included in the project costs.
If you can afford Cisco (the annual subscriptions and training as well!) then go for them if not then I would not hesitate to recommend HP with their lifetime swap out warranty.
Richard
Ric. She is in a primary school.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ric_
I also can recommend HP. If you're on a tight budget I'd recommend your core switch for servers and connecting other switches to be managed and other switches unmanaged.
Netgear is cheaper than HP and has the same bang for your buck tbh.
I was thinking Netgear, I almost bought one at Christmas when the 48 3Com died, but was advised not to mix them. Now I'm changing all of them I'll look again.
Michael - Thanks I wondered if I could get away with just the one managed, kind of direct replacement to the current set up.
Ric_ - The plan is to upgrade the server/s and workstations to gigabit also. Though I've yet to work through that bit of the plan. The road ahead is steep enough as it is:D
John - do you have a netgear model number please?
We've just spent 57k on HP kit...........got a sexy HP ProCurve 5406zl\5400zl ;)
Personally I'd also go for the hp gear if you can afford it, we use the 2600 series now at a couple of primary schools. Whatever you get go layer 2 managed if funds allow.
I would mirror the comments above about the rest of the infrastructure. The best way to deal with it would be to draw up a simple network diagram showing how the servers and switches connect together along with how fast. If your site has more than 50-100 stations I'd be looking at teamed 1GB cards in the servers. Depending on how new they are they may already have 1gb cards in them, I would probably not bother upgrading stations that don't have 1GB/s cards in them already unless they are really new because of limited benifit with older hardware.
You can still get good gains thouth even with single links between the servers and switches. They may not be fully utilized but they will still be vastly faster than the current setup, especially if there are only a few stations really hitting the network at any one time.
yep another one for hp top quality gear and rarely goes wrong have had a few dodgy things from netgear 3com
Layer 2 Managed Gigabit Switches by NETGEAR
Chris said your a Primary School further up so suspect you won't be needing full Layer 3 Management, so anything on this page:
Layer 2 Managed Gigabit Switches by NETGEAR
But you could probably get away with these - Gigabit Smart Switches by NETGEAR
I have used the Stacking Smart Switches and they are fine (if you wont be stacking them inside the same cabinet then the Stacking is not really needed IMHO), we have Stackable, Gigabit Ethernet Smart Switches - GS724TS & GS748TS in our Media Studies area so all the Media PCs have gig to the desktop and it got a 1GB direct connected fibre to the core and its working flawlessly.
Thanks for the links John, what's the difference between Smart switches and fully managed ones?