Switch Replacements

[mw184]

Hi all,

 

I have come to the point where I am looking at replacing a number of switches in the school (9 or so in a Primary School) as the current ones are all at least 10 years old and struggling/giving me cause for concern. The previous Network Manager bought some HPE OfficeConnect switches (1820's I believe) and I am happy with how those are performing, however they have been discontinued.

 

Does anyone have any recommendations for switches etc. It is quite an tech reliant Primary School (laptops for full year groups, iPads galore, PC's in every room and lots and lots of laptops, plus servers and other network gubbins) so we have a lot of networking going on in the building so wanted some ideas.

 

Thanks in advance!

[Millgate_Jon]

Hello mw184

I`ve managed quite a few switch installs for schools, requirements vary from site to site and different vendors run different promo`s at any given time so it can be hit and miss as to "who is best".

If you`d like to discuss in a bit more detail please drop me a line, we can run an audit for you and see whats what and make some recommendations from there.

Cheers

Jon.

[FN-GM]

What features do you require? It’s hard to recommend a product when we are not sure what you’re looking for.

[timbo343]

Hi all,

 

I have come to the point where I am looking at replacing a number of switches in the school (9 or so in a Primary School) as the current ones are all at least 10 years old and struggling/giving me cause for concern. The previous Network Manager bought some HPE OfficeConnect switches (1820's I believe) and I am happy with how those are performing, however they have been discontinued.

 

Does anyone have any recommendations for switches etc. It is quite an tech reliant Primary School (laptops for full year groups, iPads galore, PC's in every room and lots and lots of laptops, plus servers and other network gubbins) so we have a lot of networking going on in the building so wanted some ideas.

 

Thanks in advance!

Aruba 1930 or 1960 would be ok for a primary school

[Aprice]

Where budget permits we tend to put Aruba in (full fat rather than the Instant ON range) Where it doesn't we'd start to look at alternates like Cambium or Ubiquiti.

 

I've learned to stay away from Instant ON after a load of dead switches, and the older Cisco small business switches drove us all up the wall.

[supportman]

Ubiquiti do a great range these days, very reliable and nice features. Also good looking.

 

Not as cheap as they used to be, but I put them in everywhere now.

[pablo007]

The 1820 were 1gb only, you should be looking at 10gb uplinks on switches now, the Dell N1524P are really good but are at the higher end of the price but very rarely falter and come with good waranty.

[Olliedawg]

Consider Mikrotik - specifically this model : MikroTik network switch L3 Gigabit Ethernet (CRS354-48P-4S+2Q+RM) (senetic.co.uk) : They also do a L2 one for a lower price.

 

Use these at my secondary, not had any problems with them

[PotNoodleTech]

If your on a tight budget which I assume it will be given your using 10yr old switches now, then look at Ubiquiti you can't really better the value and performance for the money plus it makes it super easy to add a load of ubiquiti wifi points down the road.

[Jcx500]

Aruba instant on or Ubiquiti

[dhicks]

Does anyone have any recommendations for switches etc.

 

Just another recommendation for Ubiquiti. We're at pretty much the same stage as you - 10-year-old-ish HP switches, planning to replace this summer with Ubiquiti switches. Pretty much each of our classrooms has a class set of Chromebooks in, so decent internal wireless network performance is going to be important. We currently have Ubiquiti wireless access points (a mixture of models now) which work well and CCTV, with a few smaller Ubiquiti switches in a couple of spots where we ran out of network ports, so having Ubiquiti accross the network should give us a nice, single, easy-to-manage control panel. We have a fibre core network, and Ubiquiti's fibre aggrgation switches are quite affordable, it should hopefully all go together nicely. We'll also be able to upgrade to Ubiquiti's snazzy new WiFi 7 access points if we want, which is a good option to have.

 

I did also talk to TP-Link at the BETT show this year, I was quite impressed by their offering - similar to Ubiquiti, they do switches, wireless and CCTV. It's just that we already have a bunch of Ubiquiti kit, so that probably tipped us in their favour, but the TP-Link system did look good.

[Tefters]

Ubiquiti, all I have to say [emoji106]

[mrbios]

Another Ubiquiti vote here. Their new unifi range has a ton of flexibility in models to fit every school need (minus a solid L3 option anyway, not that i'd trust them with that role anyway)

[aac]

No question Ubiquiti all the way. You can afford to have spares sat waiting if god forbid you needed them...

[dmj]

I used to use Ubiquiti, but nowadays TP-Link have more than an edge over Ubiquiti: many more features for a much lower price.

[aac]

Just looked at the TP-Link range and they have a distinct lack of multi gig options, for example i could only find an 8 port model. Having just replaced my core switch HP 5406r zl2 with a Netgear M4300 96X I am now looking at edge options. I think the Ubiquiti range is far more extensive at a descent price point...

[dmj]

Just looked at the TP-Link range and they have a distinct lack of multi gig options, for example i could only find an 8 port model. Having just replaced my core switch HP 5406r zl2 with a Netgear M4300 96X I am now looking at edge options. I think the Ubiquiti range is far more extensive at a descent price point...

Apologies I'm not really sure I follow, you need more than eight 10GB/s for edge switches?

I was partly replying based on the OP's requirement for a primary school rather than a datacenter

 

This is the TP-link enterprise range (Jetstream/Omada)

https://www.tp-link.com/uk/business-networking/omada-switch-l3-l2-managed/

 

They are roughly equivalent in throughput to the Ubiquiti 'pro' range which is perfect for edge IMO, but with more of the features of Ubiquities higher ranges for less money.

[PotNoodleTech]

Apologies I'm not really sure I follow, you need more than eight 10GB/s for edge switches?

I was partly replying based on the OP's requirement for a primary school rather than a datacenter

 

This is the TP-link enterprise range (Jetstream/Omada)

https://www.tp-link.com/uk/business-networking/omada-switch-l3-l2-managed/

 

They are roughly equivalent in throughput to the Ubiquiti 'pro' range which is perfect for edge IMO, but with more of the features of Ubiquities higher ranges for less money.

 

What's the interface like on them? Ubiqs web interface is pretty much the best around as far as I've seen?

[mw184]

Thanks for all the replies! Looks to me like I will be looking down the Aruba or Ubiquity route. Run full Ubiquity wifi here with the console running on an old server. Might have a look at their options for a machine to host this as well rather than a server, I know they used to do Dream Machine's but I haven't looked in a while so I am sure there will be something newer/more feasible for a full network

[PotNoodleTech]

Thanks for all the replies! Looks to me like I will be looking down the Aruba or Ubiquity route. Run full Ubiquity wifi here with the console running on an old server. Might have a look at their options for a machine to host this as well rather than a server, I know they used to do Dream Machine's but I haven't looked in a while so I am sure there will be something newer/more feasible for a full network

 

Having had Ubiquiti in the past, and Aruba now, I would go Ubiquiti if I was doing it again.

[localzuk]

One thing to consider is multi-gig ports. Current generation wireless APs require 2.5Gbps ports. So, base model 1Gbps switches aren't really the ideal to install everywhere.

 

We put Aruba 6100M and 6300M switches in my last place, and this place has so far been going with 6100M models - though I will be reconsidering this next batch due to price.

 

Neatgear are very well priced for their capability, as are Unifi (for edge switches only, not really suitable for core yet IMO).

[mw184]

I have looked into the Ubiquiti stuff a while ago and it looked appealing back then, but the price put me off. However seeing that any reasonable competitor such as Aruba are either on par or not too much cheaper, Ubiquiti are looking very good once again.

 

I have some old Netgear stuff currently in the rack but have had a lot of trouble with them so didn't really consider them, to be honest thought I need to remember that they are over 10 years old so I should give them some credit for that!

 

Going to be a long process of upgrading these. Been told the budget only holds enough to do maybe 3 at a time (yet over £5000+ can be found for iPads. Only been warning about this for 2 years now!) so it is going to take a while to get this done, better target where is most needed first.

[ITGuyNW]

I was about to do a full refresh this year but now been told there's no money.... ha

[localzuk]

In terms of reliability - I ran 30+ Unifi switches for about 7 or so years at my last place before the connect the classroom project replaced them. In that time, we had 2 switches fail - an 8 port that overheated, and a 24 port that just died. Took about 5 minutes to swap them, as the functionality in the controller for doing so is very simple to use. They're cheap enough that you can have spares on the shelf I found.

[dmj]

What's the interface like on them? Ubiqs web interface is pretty much the best around as far as I've seen?

 

They are enterprise switches, so centrally managed software defined.

Use the controller: