How many ports do you use????

Hello. in the access layer if you had a 48/24/whatever port switch would you use all the ports on that switch?

Also which one do you prefer and why. 24 port or 48 port switches?

If I have a 48, I tend to use 30 out of the 48, so there are 18 ports free for resiliency. If I have 24 port, I tend to use 15 so there are 9 ports for resiliency. People may look at this as stupid, but I have had singular ports go on the fritz before (when all ports were used) and as such had to buy a new switch/get replacement on warranty, this way, I have the redundancy.

Take that how you will.

in one of the rooms we have at HC we have a rack of 9 Switches, they are all 48 port and all the switches are cascaded (one big switch dude) and EVERY port barring 3 or 4 is used - looks darn sweet when you shut the lights off and you watch all the lights

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CISCODISCO

Also which one do you prefer and why. 24 port or 48 port switches?

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It is better to have fewer cabinets with 48 port switches because:

it's less equipment
more simple to document/manage
fewer cabinets means better communications between the cabinets and the core ( one 10GB/s link to the core, as opposed to 1/2GB one each switch to core)
more equipment in each cabinet means you can stack the switches with stacking cables (40GB/s) instead of uplinks and improve speed

I always tend to go with 48 port switches whenever I can get away with it for the reasons stated above and also second the recommendation for stacking, not only for the speed benefits but i also find it a little easier to manage. I also tend to make use of all available ports on a switch and then order more as required. All switches are under support so we can have a new box with us pretty quickly, and if that's not quick enough we also have uniform hardware throughout allowing us to move hardware should something business critical be affected.

For our new build deployment I've taken the final point count for each hub room (this includes spare capacity) then rounded up to the nearest multiple of 192 (4*48) to give ample empty ports for future expansion.