bigjb Posted June 18, 2009 Posted June 18, 2009 Does anyone have any recommendations for makes and models of switches? We are looking at replacing our core switch and a number of satellite ones. They must be VLAN compatitable and an element of future proofing. Our internal cabling consists of mainly cat5 the likelihood of being replaced is pretty slim. Any views?
plexer Posted June 18, 2009 Posted June 18, 2009 Many many threads on switches please try a search first. Ben
carlk2008 Posted June 18, 2009 Posted June 18, 2009 We have just got Netgear GS748T Pro-safe 48-Port Layer 2 Smart Gigabit Switch They were quite expensive when we got them but probably down in price now. GS748TS - ProSafe® 48-port Gigabit Stackable Smart Switch - NETGEAR.com detail=Specifications Hope this was a help to you Carl 1
K.C.Leblanc Posted June 18, 2009 Posted June 18, 2009 We have HP procurve kit. Very dependable, not had one fail is 3 years. Our core is a 5408zl with a mixture of 26 and 28 series in other locations. You could probably use a 2810 as a core switch if you don't need many fibre connections. How big is your network? What's you budget. Oh I know it has it's fans on here, but I wouldn't buy Netgear. 1
maf_001 Posted June 18, 2009 Posted June 18, 2009 We have HP procurve kit. Very dependable, not had one fail is 3 years. Our core is a 5408zl with a mixture of 26 and 28 series in other locations. You could probably use a 2810 as a core switch if you don't need many fibre connections. How big is your network? What's you budget. Oh I know it has it's fans on here, but I wouldn't buy Netgear. I would also reccommend Procurve Switches I had a ZL for a core and then other procures for the client switches, never had any problems with them. They also come with a great warranty i have one port go down on one of my 48 port switches and it was replaced next day after a 10 min convosation with HP. Things i run on the network: I had over 1500 client devices attached and 30 servers all using procuve. I could still RIS 90 PC's during the day time without affecting any clients. I also run 150 thin clients these never got disconnected. They are by far the best value for money, they are perfect unless you can buy cisco equiptment 1
Geoff Posted June 18, 2009 Posted June 18, 2009 With Cisco vs HP ProCurve you are just paying extra for a Cisco badge IMHO. 1
RobFuller Posted June 18, 2009 Posted June 18, 2009 With Cisco vs HP ProCurve you are just paying extra for a Cisco badge IMHO. I agree, HP's have always performed well for me in the past just keep the firmware up-to-date helped a lot. Currently using D-Link and Netgear which compared to price of HP gear has allowed us to have gigabit over the whole site which would just be so expensive with the HP gear. 1
Butuz Posted June 18, 2009 Posted June 18, 2009 HP Procurve are the leaders at the moment. I have never had to test the lifetime warranty as I've not had one fail in 5 years. Butuz 1
Dos_Box Posted June 18, 2009 Posted June 18, 2009 We have just got Netgear GS748T Pro-safe 48-Port Layer 2 Smart Gigabit Switch They were quite expensive when we got them but probably down in price now. GS748TS - ProSafe® 48-port Gigabit Stackable Smart Switch - NETGEAR.com detail=Specifications Hope this was a help to you Carl Another thumbs up for the Netgear kit. The cheaper smart switches are managed and support VLANs too. Great for those who want managed GB switches without a sky high price. 1
Cools Posted June 18, 2009 Posted June 18, 2009 i have NetGear 24 and 48 Port PoE Smart Switches GS724TP and GS74TP All PoE for AP's and all GB with 10GB/s Mods for uplinks in them to back bone all my Switches i have not had 1 problem Up time Since installed. July 08 And thay have Cisco Power ratings up to 15w for any Cisco PoE Stuff like IP phones.
bossman Posted June 18, 2009 Posted June 18, 2009 Cisco here for the past 7 years + and only had one failure which was PSU and was swapped out next day. You pays yer money and yer makes yer choice of either HP or Cisco depending on your network requirements and your budget.Estimate of 80% of web built on Cisco equipment. :)
bigjb Posted June 18, 2009 Author Posted June 18, 2009 Thanks for your input guys. We have around 270 stations with 1 central cabinet and 5 satellite cabinets with Trendnet switches that are 10 years old now and are unmanaged.
spc-rocket Posted June 18, 2009 Posted June 18, 2009 HP Procurve are the leaders at the moment. I have never had to test the lifetime warranty as I've not had one fail in 5 years. Butuz Some of the inner workings of HP switches actually used cisco technology and is licensed by HP from cisco. So the credit goes to Cisco for reliability and not HP but it does help if there are competators to cisco to make their prices cheaper. Ash.
funkymunky Posted June 20, 2009 Posted June 20, 2009 Another vote for HP ProCurve, we run a network of 30k+ (soon to be over 40k) edge ports using their kit and get very few problems with it.
m25man Posted June 20, 2009 Posted June 20, 2009 Cisco - Feature rich but you really need to be a Cisco IOS guru to make them work properly and are Expensive. Never had a failure (yet) loads of these can be found used/secondhand as the banking sector is being asset stripped and sold off for a third of the new price! I recently found 6 month old Catalyst 3560G-48TS switch with 3 cisco sfp modules inside a cabinet at an IT brokers and bought it for under £500! it was worth at least £3k Procurve - probably one of the easiest to setup and manage and still has most of the features Cisco offer without the premium price tag. Warranty is fantastic... I have had two switches fail after 4 years both I bought off ebay for peanuts but HP swapped them out next day pre 10 with no questions asked! Netgear - Prosafe products Limited Lifetime warranty (5Yrs) proof of purchase needed for warranty all products must be registered all support calls escalated to Ireland before authorising warranty swaps have waited up to a week to get a failed unit swapped. Cheap - Probably the lowest cost per port for an enterprise class device. If I have one complaint about Netgear Switches it would be the firmware updates/changes. You can have some real issues if you do not upgrade an entire family of devices to match each other. Planet - you get what you pay for in the switch market.... They work, have the feature set of a Daewoo. The power supplies look like spares from a 1960's Radio Shack. When they die you throw them away and fit another. Allied-Telesyn & D-Link - To be fair I have very little exposure to them, the ones I have replaced were still working after 5 or 6 years of service so they can't be that bad. Linksys and Levelone Im not sure that I would use these in my core cabinets but certainly some of these Chinese clones of leading manufacturers designs seem to deliver the goods. Levelones Fibre converters are incredibly good value in comparison to others. If you are buying HP then make sure the vendor squeezes HP for the Edu Sector discount. HP will call the school and verify the deal is kosher then the vendor gets your additional discount knocked off his buy price. This means that you could be paying 10% less than the normal web prices for your Procurve kit if you negotiate the deal properly. In a recession there are always loosers, in this case the banking sector there is a heck of a lot of good quality second user kit out there if you know where to look. Don't be scared to consider it, it could save your school a fortune. 1
K.C.Leblanc Posted June 20, 2009 Posted June 20, 2009 Thanks for your input guys. We have around 270 stations with 1 central cabinet and 5 satellite cabinets with Trendnet switches that are 10 years old now and are unmanaged. How much are you spending, a school I know have bough a lot of used ProCurve 2650s off ebay. Although they're not full gigabit they have gigabit uplinks and if matched with a good gigabit core switch should be a lot faster then the switches you have (they're also managed). One other thing, get measuring your cabinets. Modern managed switches tend to be deeper then old unmanaged ones. You might have to change some cabs (remember to make a allowance for the power cable).
Sylv3r Posted June 20, 2009 Posted June 20, 2009 No issues with the HP Procurve kit here. Have 30+ switches and all run fine and no need for warranty replacements in about 5 years.
Michael Posted June 20, 2009 Posted June 20, 2009 I've used HP kit in years. The newer switches are smart, run silent, full of features and easy to setup. I've had to use their warranty service once and after explaining the problem and what I had tried, they replaced the switch next day as promised. As for going for 10/100 or Gigabit, it's really upto you, but all switches come with dual Gigabit uplinks, which are ideal for linking switches or connecting servers.
john Posted June 20, 2009 Posted June 20, 2009 Netgear - Prosafe products Limited Lifetime warranty (5Yrs) proof of purchase needed for warranty all products must be registered all support calls escalated to Ireland before authorising warranty swaps have waited up to a week to get a failed unit swapped. Cheap - Probably the lowest cost per port for an enterprise class device. If I have one complaint about Netgear Switches it would be the firmware updates/changes. You can have some real issues if you do not upgrade an entire family of devices to match each other. You are wrong on the Netgear stuff, all ProSafe stuff is now Lifetime warranty not the 5 years it used to be to match the likes of HP. Yes it should be registered, BUT you can do it at time of fault, never had a problem on time-scales of doing it this way, but as you should be doing for your Asset Register you should have details of the Serial Number, Model, Order number etc so just register it then its much easier. Its certainly cheap but functional, it does have its own "language" at times though as I found out when a friend was helping me do a VLAN on one about 2 years ago the names and stuff he was telling me just didn't exist! (Yes we found it in the end etc ) I run Netgear stuff and love it, with my budget HP stuff is out of the question at the swtich side of things, its hard enough getting HP Desktops and Laptops at times.
m25man Posted June 22, 2009 Posted June 22, 2009 You are wrong on the Netgear stuff, all ProSafe stuff is now Lifetime warranty not the 5 years it used to be to match the likes of HP. I stand corrected by my learned friend.... Lifetime Warranty But I have to say I much prefer the more liberal HP approach to warranty transfer.
jam3s Posted June 25, 2009 Posted June 25, 2009 (edited) I think the conversation is a bit pointless until you specify some more details such as: -the size of the network (how many nodes) -are you currently running or planning to run voice and video e.g QoS requirements -what sort of data applications your using - how redundant the network needs to be - what kinds of security features needed in place e.g are you planning NAC or 802.1x - what are you planning on the wireless front e.g manged wireless system such as aruba - what you feel most comfortable managing also the quote below is rubbish as Procurve are not the market leaders. Cisco currently own the largest market share of switching. Procurve stuff is good but just not as good as Cisco, but you get what you pay for! HP Procurve are the leaders at the moment. I have never had to test the lifetime warranty as I've not had one fail in 5 years. Butuz Edited June 25, 2009 by jam3s
Butuz Posted June 25, 2009 Posted June 25, 2009 also the quote below is rubbish as Procurve are not the market leaders. Cisco currently own the largest market share of switching. Procurve stuff is good but just not as good as Cisco, but you get what you pay for! Lol - if it was not for HP you would still be paying £2500 for a 24 port Cisco switch. HP have driven Cisco to where they are today IMHO by 5-7 years ago offering 95% of the functionality at under 50% of the cost (originally). Now cisco have lowered their prices so much there is alot less in it I agree. Butuz
apoth0r Posted June 25, 2009 Posted June 25, 2009 We use the eXtreme stuff, as far as I recall, there hasn't been a single problem since I started in September, we've done the usual switch restarts during the holidays to see if anything crops up but they just work regardless!
jam3s Posted June 25, 2009 Posted June 25, 2009 yea i agree the market competitiveness is important i think each solution is good in its own environment. I was just pointing out its not as simple as just pick a vendor and run with it. need to look more at the requirements of the organization.
localzuk Posted June 25, 2009 Posted June 25, 2009 also the quote below is rubbish as Procurve are not the market leaders. Cisco currently own the largest market share of switching. Procurve stuff is good but just not as good as Cisco, but you get what you pay for! I think you're kinda way off base there... Yes Cisco are still the market leader, in some areas, and in some countries (for example HP are the market leader in Finland IIRC). Also, on features, the new HP switches have pretty much all of the functionality of the Cisco equipment now. In a school situation, you would *never* need the extra few functions that Cisco offers. So, it isn't a case of getting what you pay for, more a case of paying for something you'll never use, and a name badge.
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