Managed switches

[Norphy]

Please forgive the upcoming daft question but I need to ask it as I don't know the answer

I've been reading peoples posts on this site singing the praises of managed switches, particully the HP Procurve series. At the moment all of the switches on our network are unmanaged with the odd "Smart" switch thrown in for good measure (Example, Netgear Prosafe FS726T). Would benefit is there to be had to going over to managed switches? According to my calculations replacing them all with a mixture of Procurve 2848, 2626 and 2650 would cost about £5200 (still less than one Cisco 48port gigabit managed switch!). Is it worth the money? How would I sell the proposition to my line manager (A non technical assistant head)?

Cheers,

Norphy

[plexer]

Managed switches allow you to see what is happening network traffic wise and where you may have problems with machines etc...

You could do what I've just done, I couldn't afford to just replace all my switches with managed ones so I bought 1 2524 to put in each cabinet giving me the management for each one. In some cabinets I had some corega switch things and used the 2324's I displaced to upgrade these so I now have HP Procurve throughout.

Cheers,

Ben

[Dos_Box]

'Smart' switches allow you to perform certain network tasks such as setting up VPNs', QOS and port allocation. Fully managed switches allow you manage them completely and are foar more versitile. Their price reflects this. I am however looking at purchacing some NetGear GS748T Smart switches as we don't need the full managed funcionality, but we do need lots of Gb ports at a decent price with GBIC module uplink. 48 Gb ports at under £600 with some management capability is fine by me.

[CyberNerd]

Advantages of managed switches:
analyse traffic (SNMP), analyse switch behaviour
QoS (give priority to certain traffic - speed up the network)
ACL (access control lists prevent certain computers accessing resources -security)
Layer 3 switching (on some)

Our switches (the new ones 3com 3250 3226, at least) are all Layer3 switches.
This potentially allows us to segregate the network more effectively, for example we could subnet the existing network and install VOIP phones / cameras / wireless on the same physical network as the computers.

The Becta technical specification for schools has lots of info on this
http://www.becta.org.uk/subsections/...astructure.pdf

[ChrisH]

One thing to take into account with these 48 port switches which I was warned about is their depth. The 2650 is:
Dimensions (WxDxH) 44 cm x 32.5 cm x 4.5 cm
Two of my three cabinets can take 30" total including the power in the back so will have to be replaced :?

[wesleyw]

Yeah thats a real pain! I have bought DLink Managed switches in the past and thankfully all but the modular chassis' have all been half depth so will fit in pretty much anything! I've left the school where I installed them I have been informed that there was only one problem with them recently a few blew some ports when the school suffered a lightning strike and even then it only took a few ports out of the 4 48 port switches that were affected lol so not bad at all (Needed some really good surge protection I think )

[Geoff]

Paranoid people fit a UPS to their switch cabinets. Plus there's something cool about being able to browse the internet during a powercut.

[E1uSiV3]

lol @ Geoff, you dont want to do it in front of certain members of staff tho, cus they would want that sort of failover in the rooms next...

[wesleyw]

Easy answer say you'll put in a generator but all of the Teaching staffs wages are curtailed by 5% lol

Wes

[Geoff]

Well yes, if you want five nines uptime you'll need a diesel generator.

[john]

The best thing for me in the last powercut is one office block is on a huuuuge UPS, and we were saying we could not work, no servers, but got workstations, and they said no cups of tea! Correct, the plugs in the kitchen did not work, but unplug a PC and put an extension in and then we get power for the kettle, so we had a cup of tea. I got some strange looks and it did pee some people off as I had a cup of hot steaming tea and other staff did not. I like to look after my secretaries and SMT, then when I need a favour I know I will be able to ask and not get a big fat "NO".

[pete]

Paranoid people fit a UPS to their switch cabinets. Plus there's something cool about being able to browse the internet during a powercut.

We've done that to the backbone switch rack - before they weren't even surge protected - and the switches are more reliable as a result. I'd love to do it to all cabinets.

Having said that our fuse boxes are "creatively" labelled, and the power supply here has never been that great.