Cisco vs HP vs. Dell infrastructure Solutions

[beatmix01]

Here we go. Is the Cisco worth the EDIT:$3500 price difference?

Cisco Solution

Catalyst 2948G-GE-TX 48 10/100/1000 Port + 4 SFP
Catalyst 2750-G-24T SMI - Switch 24 Port
Catalyst Series GBIC MOD
Pix 515e Restricted

HP Procurve Solution

Procurve Switch 2848 48 10/100/1000 Port
Procurve Switch 6108 6 10/100/1000 Port (Layer 3)
GBIC EN 1000Base-SX
Pix 515e Restricted

 

[nightowl]

Is the second Cisco item on your Cisco list supposed to be a 3750 instead of a 2750? As far as I know there are no current L3 devices in Cisco's linup with that model number. Also, what are the requirements for the infrastructure? I know that the HP switches have had problems in the past when operating at full capacity and dropping frames. Also, do you need gig to the desktop or are you just planning for the future?

 

[beatmix01]

Yes, my mistake on the 2750, that was supposed to read Catalyst 3750.

Here is the situtation. My firm just brought me on board to do a major overhaul on the IT infrastructure. The office is running on 10 yr old technology, including Windows 98 on all the desktops. (Except for mine and a select few others.) Since we are purchasing all new PC's with gig nics pre-installed it would only make sense that they actually have gig uplinks to the switch.

I plan on defining several vlans within my group (somewhere along three), and possibly even thinking of putting all clients in the DMZ and servers behind the PIX. (Have not fully decided yet.)

I originally was thinking about installing a router, however if I can route at gig speeds why bottle neck the network by installing a 10/100Base-T router.

BTW the price difference is approximately $4,000 between the two.

 

[nightowl]

Here is a link talking about the performance of the HP 2800 series switches. Also, the Cisco 2948 switch that you listed cannot do full line rate forwarding either. Depending on how many PCs you have you might be able to go with just a 3750. Also, you may want to check out Dell's (maybe a 5224 and a 6024) switches as they have similar features but better performance than the HP switches. The biggest thing you will get with Cisco hardware over the others is its flexibility in configuration and support.

 

[spidey07]

stay away from the 2948G - it is an ancient switch and is over 5 years old. 37xx or 27xx or 35xx would be more current.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: beatmix01
Yes, my mistake on the 2750, that was supposed to read Catalyst 3750.

Here is the situtation. My firm just brought me on board to do a major overhaul on the IT infrastructure. The office is running on 10 yr old technology, including Windows 98 on all the desktops. (Except for mine and a select few others.) Since we are purchasing all new PC's with gig nics pre-installed it would only make sense that they actually have gig uplinks to the switch.

I plan on defining several vlans within my group (somewhere along three), and possibly even thinking of putting all clients in the DMZ and servers behind the PIX. (Have not fully decided yet.)

I originally was thinking about installing a router, however if I can route at gig speeds why bottle neck the network by installing a 10/100Base-T router.

BTW the price difference is approximately $4,000 between the two.

for a network that size you won't need VLANs.

it should be as simple as possible - one network with all clients/servers on the inside interface of the pix...your internet connection would go to the outside interface. simple = you get to play golf.

 

[Boscoh]

What kind of traffic are they pushing? Is it standard office traffic or is something like video/audio files? I wouldn't do gig to the users if it's standard office traffic.
.
You are going to be hard pressed getting anywhere close to Gig speeds with standard business computers, and thats a hardware limitation...in fact, there are quite a few servers and high-end workstations out there that are not capable of doing gig speeds because of hardware limitations.

Save your money and do a 100mbps rollout to the client computers, gig between the users and the server farm, and run Cat6. The gig nics in the client PC's will probably give you a little better performance on a 100mbps network than a standard 100mbps nic would as the components are usually higher quality. I doubt any of your clients will be maxing out 100mbps. Take the money you save and buy a nice intrusion prevention device, or centrally managed AV suite.

That said, Cisco 2950's are solid 100mbps user switches. You can aggregate them into something like a 3750 or a Dell 5212 or 5224. The Dell switches are solid and would save you quite a bit of money.

 

[beatmix01]

I know that the Dell switches would save me a good sum of money, however, I also have to look at this as a major investment. My company does not upgrade their hardware very often at all, like I said we are running 10 year old technology, our servers are two PC clones running Novell 3.11. Included in this migration will be internal mail hosting, SQL 2k, as well as all the lovelies that AD includes. I have alerady decided on SAV for virus protection, and in terms of intrustiont detection I am planning on setting up a good old snort box running on a locked down redhat linux server.

I have a few concerns using Dell switches on my backbone. Since they are relaviely new to the networking arena, who is to say they will still be in the business 5 years from now. In terms of vlan, the reason I want to do this is to separate the user lan from the server lan.

2948G, 5 years old? Why would it still be listed as a current product on cisco's site?

 

[spidey07]

Its a left over extension of the original 2948G platform, considered ancient in comparison to the 2950/3550 series.

The 2948G platform never did sell very well although I have hundreds of them. Nice switches at the time, but that was 5 years ago...based on the 4000 series supervisor 1 - basically a non-chassis sup1 supervisor.

 

[beatmix01]

well then, can you recommend another 48 port gigbit switch?

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: beatmix01
well then, can you recommend another 48 port gigbit switch?

2950, 3550, 3750 line. if you just want a user switch the 2950 series would be fine.

 

[nightowl]

Cisco does not have a current 48 port switch that has a non-blocking backplane with gig on all ports. The 2950 has up to 48 10/100 ports and 2 gbic slots, the 3550 has the same but L3 capabilities and some lower density all gig models, and the 3750 is pretty much the same as the 3550 but adds stacking and higher density for gigabit on some models. If you are looking for a gig switch Dell is probably your best bet. Also, with the size of your network you really do not need multiple vlans like spidey said. There are not enough hosts on your network to really justify the multiple vlans and routing that will be needed and there is no reason to make things more complex than needed.

 

[beatmix01]

I also hope to install a multiple terabyte server to transfer all of our VHS tapes into digital format so our agents can pull up any of the client videos on a whim. I also forgot to mention earlier that VPN will used for our remote agents in florida and connecticut.

Wow, and I just found out that the EOS for the 2948 is 11/3/04. Glad I posted here before I went along with making any final decisions.

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: beatmix01
I also hope to install a multiple terabyte server to transfer all of our VHS tapes into digital format so our agents can pull up any of the client videos on a whim. I also forgot to mention earlier that VPN will used for our remote agents in florida and connecticut.

Umm, you also forgot to ellaborate on the video backup as well as this is the first time you have mentioned it.

 

[beatmix01]

Yes, as this is something that I have only toyed with in my head, the amount of VHS we have is absurd. We have 4 walls and a 4 sides of a support column lines with rows and rows of VHS. I know the backup solution for this would probably cost more than the whole server. If this is even approved I do not see it happening for a year or two, however, I do not want to implement a network that we will outgrow in 5 years. Including VOIP which will probably be implemented in 3-4 years.

Whoops to elaborate on the Video Server structure.

We acquire video tapes of of our clients and edit them. When a tape is needed you have to ask our editor to dupe a tape. (We know how quality degrades on VHS dupes.) This way, we can just go into the video library, pull out the tape you need and burn it to a dvd to send out.

 

[beatmix01]

Originally posted by: spidey07
stay away from the 2948G - it is an ancient switch and is over 5 years old. 37xx or 27xx or 35xx would be more current.

Look here

The 2948G is indeed 3-4 years old however the 2948G-GE-TX was just released last November according to Cisco's website.

 

[Boscoh]

Keep in mind that gig uses all the pairs in the ethernet cable. If you're planning on doing VOIP and you run gig to all your offices, you're going to either have to make two runs (having one run for the IP phone in each office) or hope there is a VOIP over gigabit solution out when you decide to do VOIP. To my knowledge there is no solution out there yet.

 

[beatmix01]

thats it, i am leaving in our 2- 10 megabit linksys hubs.

 

[nightowl]

Even though the the 2948G-GE-TX was released last November it still has less capacity on the backplane than the 2950G series. It is also based on CatOS which Cisco is moving away from. Also, most networks are only designed for 3-5 years anyway.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: beatmix01

Originally posted by: spidey07
stay away from the 2948G - it is an ancient switch and is over 5 years old. 37xx or 27xx or 35xx would be more current.

Look here

The 2948G is indeed 3-4 years old however the 2948G-GE-TX was just released last November according to Cisco's website.

its based on the same platform and is a line extension. same switch with some updated goodies...stay away (even my cisco reps/engineers have told me so)

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: Boscoh
Keep in mind that gig uses all the pairs in the ethernet cable. If you're planning on doing VOIP and you run gig to all your offices, you're going to either have to make two runs (having one run for the IP phone in each office) or hope there is a VOIP over gigabit solution out when you decide to do VOIP. To my knowledge there is no solution out there yet.

I'm pretty sure the POE standard has addressed this - carrying power over the same pairs as data. so no problem there.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: beatmix01
thats it, i am leaving in our 2- 10 megabit linksys hubs.

don't give up...

how many closets do you have and how many ports in each?

I don't see how a few 48 port switches and a firewall couldn't completely meet your needs.

 

[beatmix01]

Here is the current situation.

Small company, 26 users 3 of which are remote between Flordia and Connecticut.

Currently, 1 closet, with 2-24 PT 10meg hubs.

Thats it, and 2 pc clone servers from the stone ages. Ancient novell directory services.

Will be upgrading to SQL 2000, Exchange 2k3, Win 2k3, and a suite of other management tools.
Some serious servers w/ two gigabit nics to keep us current for a solid amount of time. I can give specs if anyone is curious.

This CatOS you are talking about, is this different that IOS? I know this sounds like a noob question, but this is my first network implementation in a live environment. I have just been hired right out of grad school to help bring this company into the 21st century.

 

[Boscoh]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Boscoh
Keep in mind that gig uses all the pairs in the ethernet cable. If you're planning on doing VOIP and you run gig to all your offices, you're going to either have to make two runs (having one run for the IP phone in each office) or hope there is a VOIP over gigabit solution out when you decide to do VOIP. To my knowledge there is no solution out there yet.

I'm pretty sure the POE standard has addressed this - carrying power over the same pairs as data. so no problem there.

I went to a voip seminar about 7 months ago and I remember the cisco engineer saying there wasnt a solution yet. Guess its changed since then. Cool.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: Boscoh

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Boscoh
Keep in mind that gig uses all the pairs in the ethernet cable. If you're planning on doing VOIP and you run gig to all your offices, you're going to either have to make two runs (having one run for the IP phone in each office) or hope there is a VOIP over gigabit solution out when you decide to do VOIP. To my knowledge there is no solution out there yet.

I'm pretty sure the POE standard has addressed this - carrying power over the same pairs as data. so no problem there.

I went to a voip seminar about 7 months ago and I remember the cisco engineer saying there wasnt a solution yet. Guess its changed since then. Cool.

Don't take my word on it...I'm just "pretty sure"

POE standard addressed the concerns of 1000 Base-T, "I believe"