New Switch - Quiet Running

[gmiller]

Hi

 

Can anyone recommend a quiet running or reliable fanless switch for use in a small office. Current netgear prosafe 48 port gigabit one is driving the smt member barmy and in turn me!! way too noisy.

 

Its either a new quiet switch or move the cabinet in summer.

 

Recommendations from personal experience and not just from manufacturers blurb ideally..

 

has to be 48 port and gigabit with mini gbic fibre ports.

 

thanks

 

gmiller

[dhicks]

Can anyone recommend a quiet running or reliable fanless switch for use in a small office.

 

We've just bought 3 HP ProCurve 1800-24g switches. Silent, gigabit, 2 gbic fibre ports. Only 24 ports but you could buy 2 and glue them together (you can port-aggregate ports, so you could have a 4 Gbps link between them or whatever).

 

--

David Hicks

[Jona]

I think your going to have trouble finding a fanless / quiet 48 porter, since most with that many ports are big enterprise level switches.

 

As above maybe consider 2 x 24s with fibre link or similar. Just make sure they are in a reasonable ventilated cab....

[enjay]

Our LevelOne switches are silent - we use GSW-2472TGX and GSW-2494, can't comment on the 48-port ones, but I don't see why they'd be all that different.

[SYNACK]

I'd agree that most of the 48port 1u switches that are worth having are going to be noisy. They just have to fit so much more hardware inside the same space and also have faster internal circuitry to deal with the extra ports (I'm talking 1gb stuff here). All of this means they can't get away with passive cooling.

 

We had this same kind of issue and none of the reasonable gear that we could find was quiet enough so we just ended up moving the cabinet. In the end it seemed like the best bet as even if we found a quieter solution this time we would still be going through all of the hassle again when it came time to upgrade the gear again.

[pete]

I'm also in the market for a quiet 48-port switch after our passively cooled netgear bricked itself and was looking at a Procurve 2650 - any idea on the noise level?

 

dabs4work - HP ProCurve Switch 2650 (J4899B)

 

For values of "quiet", it sits on a shelf 3 metres from my desk in open air and I'd prefer not to hear it at all.

[mullet_man]

We've just bought 3 HP ProCurve 1800-24g switches. Silent, gigabit, 2 gbic fibre ports. Only 24 ports but you could buy 2 and glue them together (you can port-aggregate ports, so you could have a 4 Gbps link between them or whatever).

 

--

David Hicks

 

Hi,

 

Is this easily setup? I got one 1800-24G and planning on getting another and linking them together. Is it achieved via LACP?

[WStore_Dan]

Hi

 

If any of you want pricing on any Procurve, Netgear or any other brands of switch then get in touch as we can secure an education discount on most networking brands. Netgear for example currently have a 15% education discount running until the end of the month

 

Many thanks

[Geoff]

You can also get cabinets with sound proofing. So even if you have noisy switches, the cabs are quiet.

[Michael]

You can also get cabinets with sound proofing. So even if you have noisy switches, the cabs are quiet.

 

Replacing the cab could be more expensive (depending on the size). I'd say 2 x HP 2510 switches would be a good buy.

[diggory]

I'm also in the market for a quiet 48-port switch after our passively cooled netgear bricked itself and was looking at a Procurve 2650 - any idea on the noise level?

 

dabs4work - HP ProCurve Switch 2650 (J4899B)

 

For values of "quiet", it sits on a shelf 3 metres from my desk in open air and I'd prefer not to hear it at all.

 

We've got a 2650 setting in our switch cab.

The wireless AP controller drowns it out easily.

 

The 2650 is quiet compared to the big switches, but not by your standards - it still has a fan or two.

About the only switches I know that would work for not being able to hear the 3m away in the open air is the 1800's having no fans.

 

It is also mostly a 100M switch with a couple of 1G ports to play with for your uplinks...

[diggory]

Hi,

 

Is this easily setup? I got one 1800-24G and planning on getting another and linking them together. Is it achieved via LACP?

 

I've had a quick look on one of the 1800-24G switches we have. LACP and manual trunk are on the controls.

 

It might be worth mentioning that the 1800's don't support STP as far as I know.

[mullet_man]

I've had a quick look on one of the 1800-24G switches we have. LACP and manual trunk are on the controls.

 

It might be worth mentioning that the 1800's don't support STP as far as I know.

 

Cheers, will it handle VLANs ok then?

[diggory]

Cheers, will it handle VLANs ok then?

 

Yeah, it does VLANs.

 

You can tag ports etc. I have on running two VLANs with a server sitting between the two in order to have two DHCP servers running on the same subnet (yuck!).

 

I don't think it does GARP though.

[mullet_man]

Cheers diggory, just checking we have 2 VLANs setup on first switch fine just wanted to make sure when they are linked it can handle the VLANs ok.

[FN-GM]

3com do a 48 port 10/100 switch that is fanless. Not sure if they do a gigabit one.

[Oops_my_bad]

Do you standardise on prosafe kit? If so you may want to consider the GS748TP - i've found it to be half as noisy as the GSM equivalent and it has built in PoE too.

 

Only limiting factor so far is you cant manage it on anything other than the default VLAN1 but I know netgear are about to release a FW to overcome this.

 

**EDIT** OK, so someone resurrected an old thread

Edited July 29, 2009 by Oops_my_bad

[dhicks]

Is this easily setup? I got one 1800-24G and planning on getting another and linking them together. Is it achieved via LACP?

 

I don't know, I'm afraid - ours aren't stuck together, they're used separatly around the building. We have a random chap from Cisco coming in tomorrow, so I can ask him about LACP if you like.

 

--

David Hicks

[_techie_]

Recently installed a HP Procurve 24 port 2610-24 which was fanless. Its silent, supports VLANS, and is pretty good IMO. You could stack two together, and create a 2GB trunk on the first switch?

 

HTH

Mark

[john]

Hi

 

If any of you want pricing on any Procurve, Netgear or any other brands of switch then get in touch as we can secure an education discount on most networking brands. Netgear for example currently have a 15% education discount running until the end of the month

 

Many thanks

Is this the end of July or end of August Dan?

[WStore_Dan]

Is this the end of July or end of August Dan?

 

My mistake - its running until the end of August. They are also offering free site surveys so if any of you want Netgear to come along to your school for a site survey then get in touch

 

Many thanks

[Cools]

Sound proof your CAB i did with my netgear switches...

[Butuz]

HP Procurve 2510-48 not fanless but really really quiet, near silent actually.

 

Butuz

[dhicks]

I got one 1800-24G and planning on getting another and linking them together. Is it achieved via LACP?

 

Ah ha! I actually feel like I've learned something useful today! Yes, the 1800-24G supports IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP), according to its specification sheet, anyway. This is useful to know as I'm going to need to use that in a while to get my distributed disk array working (er, after the plasterers have finished walling the switch and two servers into a cupboard, and assuming I can still find them under the dust and debris they are currently covered with...). Check out this other thread discussing why link aggregation doesn't work so well if you're trying to use all the bandwidth to just link two locations.

 

--

David Hicks

[zag]

The netgear JGS524 24 port switches have a fan but are pretty silent.

 

The 48 port GS748T version is very loud though.