• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Computer club needs switch

heymrdj

heymrdj

Diamond Member
Looking for recommendations on good reliable switches. Needs to be potent enough for multi-gigabyte transfers from multiple load balanced apache servers, and twitch games such as UT2007, COD4, Commanche 4, and others. We want 16 ports (currently have 12 and we fill that to 10) so we can expand. We have 4 other 16 port switches from Cisco, but they are aged and can't take the games and high transfers without having collisions (10 year old switches). So we want to phase out.

Recommendations please 🙂.
 
Well, You didn't say you had a budget, but HP switches are really nice. Not sure if you can get a 16 but there are 24's.
I just recently got the HP 1800-24G Which is a manged 24 port gigabit switch here in my house. I hammer it all day and it does great. Here

And there is the unmanaged version Here

The unmanaged version version should work fine for your situation. So thats my recommendation. Another thing, With any of the procurve switches, If anything happens to it, you destroy it, it gets fried by lightning (like here in florida) you call them, they overnight you a new one.
 
I was shooting for below 200$. Cheaper the better really cause we're eating up our 900$ year end budget.
 
To help specify, we don't need a managed switch. An unmanaged switch will work adequately because we don't need VLAN's, Port speed adjustments so on and so forth. A 16-24 port unmanaged gigabit switch is our primary goal.
 
The GS116 is a fairly decent switch, yeah. We used them fairly extensively at work for a long time. However, they're not exactly the best deal. Once again, I'm going to pitch the Dell PowerConnect switches, which for us have proven to be a far superior deal to the NetGear GS116.

But, if you don't like the Dell switches, you can't go wrong with the NetGear ones.
 
I looked at the Netgear and noticed that trademark miniature 512kb per port buffer. I see the Linksys has 2MB per port. Can anyone knowledgeable to this explain what this buffer is for and if it's important to my kind of traffic?
 
heymrdj, with a properly implemented TCP, you need each port to have an output buffer of (bandwidth*delay) bits, or you will not be able to sustain line rate without loss. Delay is measured end-to-end for a flow.

So what that means is that, as your network gets bigger and you try to sustain bandwidth, the smaller buffer might not be enough. This is a more significant problem in an enterprise network than in a SOHO network, and more significant a problem in a core switch than in an edge switch.

Reading through the GS116 spec sheets, I am extremely confident that many of their numbers are marketing specs and would not stand up to lab testing. The Linksys is probably no better. I guess I'm just too used to dealing with enterprise-grade switches and scrutinizing 😉

Either the Netgear or the Linksys would probably be okay in practice. I've had bad luck with Netgear, so I would recommend a different vendor. Linksys is okay, not great. Dell is not really any better (note that the 2xxx switches are bad). I always suggest at least looking at what SMC has to offer, as I have had good luck with their products. Realistically, for what you need, it's just about having the port configuration you need at a reasonable price.
 
Originally posted by: cmetz
heymrdj, with a properly implemented TCP, you need each port to have an output buffer of (bandwidth*delay) bits, or you will not be able to sustain line rate without loss. Delay is measured end-to-end for a flow.

So what that means is that, as your network gets bigger and you try to sustain bandwidth, the smaller buffer might not be enough. This is a more significant problem in an enterprise network than in a SOHO network, and more significant a problem in a core switch than in an edge switch.

Reading through the GS116 spec sheets, I am extremely confident that many of their numbers are marketing specs and would not stand up to lab testing. The Linksys is probably no better. I guess I'm just too used to dealing with enterprise-grade switches and scrutinizing 😉

Either the Netgear or the Linksys would probably be okay in practice. I've had bad luck with Netgear, so I would recommend a different vendor. Linksys is okay, not great. Dell is not really any better (note that the 2xxx switches are bad). I always suggest at least looking at what SMC has to offer, as I have had good luck with their products. Realistically, for what you need, it's just about having the port configuration you need at a reasonable price.
Click to expand...
Thx for the excellent post cmetz.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top