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.

 

[cmetz]

Dell's PowerConnect 3324 and 3348 are pretty solid, and very cost effective.

If you want the most trusted, you're talking Cisco, Extreme, or Foundry. Expect to pay a whole lot more for the privilege.

If you want super cheap, Netgear is pretty solid in the SOHO space.

Managed gives you a configuration interface, typically CLI, web, and SNMP. Manual port enable/disable, speed config, port stats (usage, errors, etc.). Modern managed switches typically also give you VLAN capability and some ACL capability. Unmanaged switches are usually just a plain old switch, with zero frills.

The difference between a L2 switch and a L3 switch is that an L3 switch can do IP forwarding (typically also full routing). An L2 switch simply switches at the Ethernet packet level, while an L3 switch can forward between subnets.

 

[osage]

nice post cmetz

I was just about to post the same sort of thing.