Gigabit switches - managed + unmanaged

[leco]

The school has been advised to replace our 10/100 switches with Gigabit switches. Currently I have 1 x 48 port managed and 2 x 24 port unmanaged, all are 3Com.

 

What manufacturers would you recommend that I look at?

[MicrodigitUK]

HP all the way

[leco]

HP all the way

 

Any model in particular?

[adamchapman]

HP Procurve +1!

 

Network of Choice - HP ProCurve Networking

[Ric_]

@leco: HP all the way... 2600 series is nice. Go for managed because you're bound to need it eventually and you'll kick yourself.

 

I do have to question the recommendation though. Are you planning on linking the switches via 10Gbps links or multiple port trunks? Will you be upgrading your server NICs too? There's little point upgrading the endpoint connections if that's not your bottleneck to start with.

[richardp]

I would also recommend HP Procurve. Used them in my previous job in industry and replaced a hodgepodge of old 3com and cisco unmanaged 10/100 switches as soon as I could in my current job in education. Replaced seven switches with two HP Procurve 4100gls (current equivalent model is the 4200vl I think) for approx £12,000 (about 4 years ago) with all the slots filled with Gigabit cards giving me 280 available ports, which works out at about £43 per port.

 

But again as already mentioned you also need to look at your servers and client computers as if they don't have Gigabit cards then they would also need upgrading so that cost would also have to be included in the project costs.

 

If you can afford Cisco (the annual subscriptions and training as well!) then go for them if not then I would not hesitate to recommend HP with their lifetime swap out warranty.

 

Richard

[Dos_Box]

@leco: HP all the way... 2600 series is nice. Go for managed because you're bound to need it eventually and you'll kick yourself.

 

I do have to question the recommendation though. Are you planning on linking the switches via 10Gbps links or multiple port trunks? Will you be upgrading your server NICs too? There's little point upgrading the endpoint connections if that's not your bottleneck to start with.

 

Ric. She is in a primary school.

[Michael]

I also can recommend HP. If you're on a tight budget I'd recommend your core switch for servers and connecting other switches to be managed and other switches unmanaged.

[john]

Netgear is cheaper than HP and has the same bang for your buck tbh.

[leco]

I was thinking Netgear, I almost bought one at Christmas when the 48 3Com died, but was advised not to mix them. Now I'm changing all of them I'll look again.

 

Michael - Thanks I wondered if I could get away with just the one managed, kind of direct replacement to the current set up.

 

Ric_ - The plan is to upgrade the server/s and workstations to gigabit also. Though I've yet to work through that bit of the plan. The road ahead is steep enough as it is:D

 

John - do you have a netgear model number please?

[IanT]

We've just spent 57k on HP kit...........got a sexy HP ProCurve 5406zl\5400zl

[SYNACK]

Personally I'd also go for the hp gear if you can afford it, we use the 2600 series now at a couple of primary schools. Whatever you get go layer 2 managed if funds allow.

 

I would mirror the comments above about the rest of the infrastructure. The best way to deal with it would be to draw up a simple network diagram showing how the servers and switches connect together along with how fast. If your site has more than 50-100 stations I'd be looking at teamed 1GB cards in the servers. Depending on how new they are they may already have 1gb cards in them, I would probably not bother upgrading stations that don't have 1GB/s cards in them already unless they are really new because of limited benifit with older hardware.

 

You can still get good gains thouth even with single links between the servers and switches. They may not be fully utilized but they will still be vastly faster than the current setup, especially if there are only a few stations really hitting the network at any one time.

Edited March 15, 2010 by SYNACK

[glennda]

yep another one for hp top quality gear and rarely goes wrong have had a few dodgy things from netgear 3com

[john]

Layer 2 Managed Gigabit Switches by NETGEAR

 

Chris said your a Primary School further up so suspect you won't be needing full Layer 3 Management, so anything on this page:

Layer 2 Managed Gigabit Switches by NETGEAR

 

But you could probably get away with these - Gigabit Smart Switches by NETGEAR

 

I have used the Stacking Smart Switches and they are fine (if you wont be stacking them inside the same cabinet then the Stacking is not really needed IMHO), we have Stackable, Gigabit Ethernet Smart Switches - GS724TS & GS748TS in our Media Studies area so all the Media PCs have gig to the desktop and it got a 1GB direct connected fibre to the core and its working flawlessly.

[leco]

Thanks for the links John, what's the difference between Smart switches and fully managed ones?

[john]

Not as much managability, you can still VLAN and Trunk / Bond on them though

[SYNACK]

Smart switches offer a limited set of managment features, usually a web page to configure it and a few of the more basic monitering and managment tools.

 

Full layer 2 managed switches usually offer more configuration options like telnet and SSH. They also support the full range of network managment stuff like propperly implemented port trunking, much better interoperability with other brands of switches. VLANs, remote port enable/disable, SPF etc. They tend to have much more sturdy processors in them also making them more stable and robust. I have had a couple of smart switches burn out their managment portion and the smart tend to be slower when configuring anything (in the switch).

 

In general they (layer 2) just give you a lot more freedom to configure the network and manage, safeguard or partition the traffic on your network. They also offer much more feedback when you are trying to track down certain kinds of network issues and can be set to alert you if something goes wrong.

[leco]

Do smart and fully managed work together? Thinking maybe a 48 port fully managed and a couple of 24 port smart. Would that work?

 

When you say 'partition the network traffic' does that mean I will be able to say route incoming external remote connections differently to the internal stuff?

 

Seems hard to believe I only did the research at Christmas when a switch broke, now I'm doing it all over again for the Gigabit. Compartmental informational thinking (or just mental). My brain hurts and it's not even 8 O'clock yet! But hey the sun is shining and what am I paid for anyway.

 

Thanks again.

[danrhodes]

I'd plum for the HP gear, or if your feeling plush drop the cash on some Cisco kit.

[SYNACK]

Do smart and fully managed work together? Thinking maybe a 48 port fully managed and a couple of 24 port smart. Would that work?

 

When you say 'partition the network traffic' does that mean I will be able to say route incoming external remote connections differently to the internal stuff?

 

Seems hard to believe I only did the research at Christmas when a switch broke, now I'm doing it all over again for the Gigabit. Compartmental informational thinking (or just mental). My brain hurts and it's not even 8 O'clock yet! But hey the sun is shining and what am I paid for anyway.

 

Thanks again.

 

As long as they are from the same brand and series then smart and managed ones usually work together fine. The issues that can arise generally occur because of the limited feature set of the smart one, we have some fully managed and smart D-Link ones at one school, one of the managed ones will work fine with the smart ones allowing trunking and link teaming but the other one will not as it is from a different series and does not speak the non standard implementation used by the smart switches.

 

From a basic standpoint using no additional features they will all work fine together if connected via a single port and not using any enhanced features no matter what the brand. Its just when you start using the fancy bits that it can cause issues.

 

If you are going with all the same brand and series then yes the setup you propose above would probably work just fine and will save you a bit of money as well but you will loose out on some of the additional features on your edge switches.

 

 

The partition the network traffic bit was a reference to VLANs and standards based trunking which will allow you to divide up your physical switches into multiple segments so they behave like separate switches which can add to security and speed. Some smart switches also offer VLANs but again you need to know they will all talk together.

 

As it is layer 2 managed it does not include routing, just slicing up the ports into different groups that cannot talk between each other. To get this functionality you need a layer 3 device like a layer 3 switch, router or even a server to pass traffic between the different segments intelligently.

 

Don't worry about the brain burningness of it all, switching and routing are both very large areas of expertise and everyone suffers from having to slog through lots of research to get the best system available at the time.

[36Degrees]

I recently bought a 3 Com and have been impressed with it. There was a slight problem with the SFPs not autonegotiating with the upstream switch but that was easily resolved by applying the latest firmware.

 

I bought a 3CRBSG2893-UK which is 24 x 1Gb + 4 SFP slots - current price £160 on Probrand.