Upgrading switches

[maxrebo]

Looking at upgrading our edge switches, currently we have a number of 3com baseline 2900 and 4200 series. Not recieving any complaints but would i benifit much by replacing these with say HP 2500 series switches?

[psydii]

You would get the lifetime warranty.

[maxrebo]

Was thinking more performance wise

[psydii]

I've had exactly the same performance issues with the 3com2900 and the HP 2530. The bottleneck was the uplink. In both occasions it was solved by link aggregation.

 

(But if you've only got the 10/100 2900 then a 100/1000 switch will definitely in general improve performance)

[minimoo]

btw, if you are working in schools ie. 500 or so pc's only - are you actually finding you saturate 1GBps uplinks in normal use ?

[psydii]

"Save your work and log off"

 

30 kids hit ctrl+s to commit their 100mb Photoshop files to the network storage.

 

Yup, it may only last 20 seconds, but it happens, and it is felt by the end users, even if the network monitoring software doesn't see it.

[ellsandell]

Get a Network Monitoring tool (PRTG/ Solarwinds etc) and see what kind of utilization your network is getting.

[njc235]

What grade of fibre do you have linking back to your core switch? Can you add a 10G uplink?

[maxrebo]

What grade of fibre do you have linking back to your core switch? Can you add a 10G uplink?

 

To be honest I don`t know, these were installed around 4/5 years ago, whats the best way of checking?

[njc235]

If you look at the cable coming out of the back of the patch panel (not the patch leads) it will probably have some writing on it. With it being 4/5 years old, it could be OM1,2 or 3. Hopefully OM3. If it has a part number, you can google it. OM3 is good for 10G up to 300m whereas OM1 is only 33M unless you use very expensive LRMs.

[maxrebo]

What grade of fibre do you have linking back to your core switch? Can you add a 10G uplink?

 

To be honest I don`t know, these were installed around 4/5 years ago, whats the best way of checking?

[njc235]

If you look at the cable coming out of the back of the patch panel (not the patch leads) it will probably have some writing on it. With it being 4/5 years old, it could be OM1,2 or 3. Hopefully OM3. If it has a part number, you can google it. OM3 is good for 10G up to 300m whereas OM1 is only 33M unless you use very expensive LRMs.

[maxrebo]

If you look at the cable coming out of the back of the patch panel (not the patch leads) it will probably have some writing on it. With it being 4/5 years old, it could be OM1,2 or 3. Hopefully OM3. If it has a part number, you can google it. OM3 is good for 10G up to 300m whereas OM1 is only 33M unless you use very expensive LRMs.

 

Thank you, will check soon

[minimoo]

fibre we had installed in 2006 is all OM3

[mrbios]

Get a Network Monitoring tool (PRTG/ Solarwinds etc) and see what kind of utilization your network is getting.

 

Just to add to this, I'd highly recommend cacti! It'll give you detailed graphs about all the SNMP obtainable information from your switches. Really useful stuff!

[maxrebo]

Ok so following on with this, im trying to see if its a waste of money upgrading these 3 com switches.

What do people look for when upgrading switches? Other than port speed.

These 3Com switches are 1gps so replacing them with HP2500 series switches (at 1gbps) would this be not much point?

They will be used as edge switches.

[njc235]

There's so much more it it than listed port speed. What about switching speed, uplink ports, port buffers etc etc. I'm sure you could still find the data sheets on the old 3com switches and compare to a 2530 or whatever. Consider the 1950 which is comware and can now have the CLI unlocked if that's something you like.

[EricM_NetCtrl]

Hi maxrebo, when i used to work in the FE Sector i used to look at support/warranty for the switches as well as functionality. We used to have a mix of 3com edge and core switches accross our 4 campuses. We found that once HP bought out 3com support for the 3com devices become limited then stopped. We then had to look at replacing our switches so we could get replacements. If you are interested at looking at new switching would you be open to Allied Telesis or even Juniper Networks? if so send me a PM.

 

Best regards,

 

Eric MacFarlane

Pre/Post Sale Technician

T: 01473 281 211

W: www.net-ctrl.com

[psydii]

Depending on when you bought the 3com 2900's they may well have automatically been uplifted to the HP Networking limited lifetime warranty...