Network switches

[richbrowncardiff]

That doesn't sound good !

[markwilfan]

No it wasn't ideal lol supposed to leave at 3.30 so only had time to rip out the cable. Will investigate today what happened and feed back to help others .

[richbrowncardiff]

@markwilfan How did you get on in the end ?

[markwilfan]

Sorted it in the end. Think it was where I hadn't set up the vlans in the controller. The outage was very similar to a packet storm but couldn't replicate it. I found reference to the same behaviour in a review of the 16-xg .

 

I like the interface tbh. Vlan tagging os a bit different to hp but I quite like it. Almost like templates for different types of ports. Big difference for me was having to have the management vlan untagged on the trunk that connects to the switch instead of all vlans tagged.

[whitte]

You can try Ubiquiti switch. I have changed all my Cisco setup to UBNT in my home network.

[localzuk]

Ended up ordering HPE Aruba.

 

5406R zl2 for the core here, and another for the core at another school, plus a selection of 2530's for the edge switches at that school.

[synaesthesia]

Don't think we'll be moving from our 5406ZL cores for a while, however like those above have really been taken by the Unifi switches.

The only downside I thought they had was the noise levels, however that was recently quashed when it was put into a large room. One side of the room has a Unifi switch, the other has a HP 1920.

You can hear the 1920 whilst standing next to the Unifi. They're about 30 metres apart.

[mrbios]

Where are you guys buying your ubiquiti switches from? I've requested quotes from a bunch of the suppliers on their UK distributors list but all the ones i've contacted are so unhelpful that i don't want to use any of them (Except comms-express, who i like....however they never got back to me when i asked for a quote on items they didn't have listed on their site)

[caffrey]

I've always used msdist.co.uk (They accept PO's)

[Achandler]

I've used in the past.

 

4gon (can be hit and miss)

msdist (are usually fine, but had stock issues last time I needed to order)

Senetic (most recently, but hasn't been painless)

[richbrowncardiff]

I used MSDIST I found them to be very helpful

[markwilfan]

Bryn at millgate can do ubiquiti too. He's very helpful.

[sparkeh]

Got ours from @Very_PC they were very helpful at working out exactly what we needed

[browolf]

What HP switch would you replace a 3com 4950 with? Pondering doing something about our core switches which are prob 10 years old by now!

[OPTCORE]

their price is affordable

[AlanD]

What HP switch would you replace a 3com 4950 with? Pondering doing something about our core switches which are prob 10 years old by now!

 

I'm never convinced that you should have a policy based on age (especially as I am getting near to retirement age myself...). I'd be happier to hear you were replacing them because you need the extra bandwidth - and that can't be obtained by Link Aggregations (Trunking).....or that they don't do the layer 3 switching and routing that you now require or something.

 

On the other hand....I think I would be keeping an eye on ebay and if another identical model comes up at a knock down price I'd be buying that and putting it on the shelf as a standby replacement. This would give you a guarantee of being able to keep going with such a large investment as replacing the whole lot.

 

...and to be honest....when switches fails it often happens early on in their life. Once past the first few years they just seem to keep going....

[caffrey]

True, our switchgear is about 8 years old, and they are Netgear GS724T - very cheap switches. We are only replacing them due to PoE needs

[atr]

I'm in the same boat here with my new employer. We have some older switches and we want to replace the lot with something else. I'm from an HP shop so am looking at HP to be installed here but one of our suppliers is a Juniper re-seller and is keen for us to have a look at them. Anyone else got any experience with Juniper on a large scale?

[AlanD]

True, our switchgear is about 8 years old, and they are Netgear GS724T - very cheap switches. We are only replacing them due to PoE needs

Nothing wrong with those switches - assuming they have the last firmware installed. They do LAGs and VLANS and have a great throughput - especially considering they are as you describe 8 years old. I'd be looking at some PoE Injectors - I bought a load of 1GB BV-Tech ones which do the high power rating (802.11at) for around £10 each from the USA....much, much cheaper than replacing the switches.

[Andycat]

I'm in the same boat here with my new employer. We have some older switches and we want to replace the lot with something else. I'm from an HP shop so am looking at HP to be installed here but one of our suppliers is a Juniper re-seller and is keen for us to have a look at them. Anyone else got any experience with Juniper on a large scale?

 

We previously had some Juniper wifi, it was perfectly fine at the time!

[zag]

True, our switchgear is about 8 years old, and they are Netgear GS724T - very cheap switches. We are only replacing them due to PoE needs

 

We've still got Netgear GS724T all round. Absolutely bulletproof!

[AlanD]

BV-Tech BV-I100H Power Over Ethernet Single Port Injector - 4 Pack | eBay

 

Would give you 4 x 19W injectors for £55. Probably cheaper than replacing your switches. So - depending on the cost of PoE switches you are looking at I'm guessing the break even point would be somewhere around 12 injectors per switch - at which point it might be cheaper to use a new switch.

 

We had a rule of putting in a new switch once we got to 6 x injectors - simply because we didn't want 2 x 6 way electrical adaptors in the cabinet...

 

They also do higher power ones - in fact we bought 30W ones for all of our needs.

[Blue_Cookeh]

I'm in the same boat here with my new employer. We have some older switches and we want to replace the lot with something else. I'm from an HP shop so am looking at HP to be installed here but one of our suppliers is a Juniper re-seller and is keen for us to have a look at them. Anyone else got any experience with Juniper on a large scale?

 

Juniper are freakin' awesome. HPE pricing on better-than-Cisco hardware. They're consistently flaunted as having the best management interface of any network vendor (I agree, having moved from Cisco to HPE to Juniper in various jobs) and generally have enterprise level features in even their base models.

Edited May 24, 2017 by Blue_Cookeh

[AlanD]

Forgot to mention....watch out for PoE when buying switches. Many access points claim to work of 802.11af ...what they often omit to tell you is that you don't get all the features working on 802.11af. So if you are planning on a wireless upgrade that might have 4 stream access points (...or maybe 8 stream access points when they start to appear) you will need 802.11at capability....and you don't really want to replace all your switches again.