24 Port Switch

[notoriousformula]

hello all, My workplace wants to upgrade their Switches. They wanna buy something big(24-30 Ports), good repu hardware, good warranty, etc.
The network will run at 10/100Mbps. No Gigabit, cus all the computers have 10/100 Mbps cards , except for two Max3 board computers.

Which Brand is most trusted in small office switches? whats is the diff. between an unmanaged and managed switch boards? whats the meaning of Layer2/Layer3 switch?

regards.

[notoriousformula]

anybody ? :(

[Player0]

The most important factor is price.

Gigabit in terms of switches has LITTLE to do with workstations. A 100bT switch with a couple gigabit ports is perfect for an environment with some nodes on multiple switches. 'bridging' switches, that is. If you have two switches, and a file server on switch one, say you have 4 people on switch two trying to access that file server. Well, theres only one bridge to the first switch and thats only 100bt, it cant possibly handle all the traffic at once. But if you bridge the switches with 1000BT, then you have much more performance.

Using 1000BT ports for fileservers also improves there performance, even if everyone else is on 100BT, because more than one connection can access the file server at a time.

Ideally, the fewer switches the better because of the traffic problems between switches.

Managed switches are very important as you get in to corporate environments. Excpect to pay $500-$800 for an entry level. Managed switches let you measure port bandwidth and is the only effective way of keeping track of your network, packets that might be hammering other servers, etc. You can usually find a lot of trouble areas. Sniffers dont work on switched networks, so you have to get managed switches to make up for that. (sniffers will only work with hubs).

I liked Dell's managed switches. Depends on what your vendor has (and i would get their recommendation).

Layers determine the amount of information the switch can look at in the data packets. The higher the layer number, the more the switch can sniff in to a data packet. You can buy Layer 7 switches now that can inspect IP header content and route packets based on location, etc, usually used in load balancing.

Its a complicated subject for a little post tho ;)

[Player0]

PS - Most decent switches will have 1-2 gigabit ports on them these days. Windows 2000 and up will let you do NIC load balancing. With two NICs in the file server, you can have a 200MBs connection (or more depending on the amount of NICs installed) and this can be a cheaper way to increase file server load capacity without moving it to gigabit.

[WesM63]

Hey notor,
Cisco at any rate. 2940's would work wonders for the office. All 10/100 ports with 2gbic ports for future upgrades.

The diffrence in layer 2 vs layer 3 is that layer 3 switches can made to be routers per say. Its kinda hard to explain read HERE (http://www.informit.com/isapi/product_id~%7BFE085D94-FC9F-4E5F-A14F-B97421DB5807%7D/content/index.asp) under Introduction to layer 3 switching.

[notoriousformula]

I'm totally confused after reading P0's post :P ..let me do some research,

Thanks for the info/link P0 and Wes :)

[tripodal]

as for my opinion... you cannot go wrong with Cisco... lifetime warranty and the name :)
Well the name at least gives you resale value.

As far as managed and unmanaged. Before you even decide waht layer you might want... Is it something you really need?

Some business are only sharing internet... while others are load balancing 10 servers...

Give us a better hint at what theyll be used for.

[Player0]

Cisco certainly isnt a bad name, but are definitely more expensive. A switch is a switch, pretty much. Check out places like CDW.com. I recommended Dell because they have good server hardware, and the switches are a good price.

My rule of thumb is, if you need a 48-port switch, you should get a managed one. Its the only way to really tell if there are any problem areas, like some NIC card going beserk and sending out bad packets or broadcast storms. When you get enough computers together, you can have problems, and the managed switch is the only way to find them really. We're not talking that much money in terms of things. If you only got 30 clients, well you are borderline. But if you expect growth in the next couple years, its still a good investment.

[notoriousformula]

Originally posted by tripodal
as for my opinion... you cannot go wrong with Cisco... lifetime warranty and the name :)
Well the name at least gives you resale value.

As far as managed and unmanaged. Before you even decide waht layer you might want... Is it something you really need?

Some business are only sharing internet... while others are load balancing 10 servers...

Give us a better hint at what theyll be used for.

well we have one 10Mbps line coming in going into two 8 port Switches(D-Link), we have 18 Desktops + 2Laptops(will get an Access point for them) sharing two Laserjet printers. There is one Huge File server, which is accessed by every computer for accounts/images/database/designs/fonts, etc. There is one Print server which handles HP Designjet 5500 printer series (http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/18972-236251-236266-12600-236266-82218.html)(biggest printer i have ever seen :eek: ) and two Xerox Advanced Multifunction Printer Systems.

Originally posted by Player0
Cisco certainly isnt a bad name, but are definitely more expensive. A switch is a switch, pretty much. Check out places like CDW.com. I recommended Dell because they have good server hardware, and the switches are a good price.

My rule of thumb is, if you need a 48-port switch, you should get a managed one. Its the only way to really tell if there are any problem areas, like some NIC card going beserk and sending out bad packets or broadcast storms. When you get enough computers together, you can have problems, and the managed switch is the only way to find them really. We're not talking that much money in terms of things. If you only got 30 clients, well you are borderline. But if you expect growth in the next couple years, its still a good investment. Yep i think we should get a switch with more ports on it, Gigabit is not the first priority right now(Computers use 10/100 old cards :( )..I'm looking at Dell, they sure make good networking stuff and is cheaper than Cisco. Managed Switch willbe a great help to our network admin.

Thanks :)

[tripodal]

I would estimate that your best configuration would be with a 24port switch, with 1 gigabit uplink port for your server... which will help it to shoot files to multiple users faster.

the gigabit will help when multiple people are pulling files... not so much if its just one :) of course you woudl have to replace the servers nic with a 1000bt, but it can be had for <100 and woudl be well worth it