Small business switch recommendations?

[joshg]

Trying to get an opinion on what kind of switch to use to distribute network out at this small business. Here's the device requirements:

3-5 PCs
8-10 IP-based phones
1 IP phone server
1 local application/database server
5-10 POS units
somewhere around 10-15 arcade games (for some reason their arcade games will have some kind of networking requirements?)
plus a little room to grow...

The entire building is going to be ran with Cat 5E and there is no real desire to run gigabit (just 100). Internet is coming in over a Motorola Canopy wireless system.

The desire is to have only one switch if possible, with enough of an "overkill" factor so there is a little room for growth and no chance of any possible bandwidth issues between any of these devices (not so much concerned with bandwidth to outside). Also they are really wanting something extremely reliable with little or no maintenance after initial setup, just something that can run for very long periods of time without maintenance or trouble!

Apparently these other guys are real Cisco fanatics but it seems kind of pricey... what do you guys think? Any quick 5 cent recommendations anyone could offer just after a quick glance? Just trying to see if it is in the ballpark or not...

 

[kevnich2]

For a small business, here's my recommendation: http://www.buy.com/prod/TRENDnet_TEG_24...d_Smart_Switch/q/loc/101/10362056.html

I've got the 48-port model (with 4 mini-gbic ports) running in our medium sized office. I've had it running for four months now and not a single hiccup, I even have two other 24 port trendnet's uplinked via fiber and have had zero problems with any of them. They're not cisco but these have been excellent for me.

 

[kevnich2]

By the way, just out of curiousity, what type of IP phones and IP phone server are you running?

 

[mattbta]

We're running HP ProCurve switches at our office with an avaya IP Office system.

 

[nweaver]

Depends on what you want to do. A non managed switch with 48 ports should be OK, but if you want to get into managment at L2, then you would need a decent managed switch. Most folks believe Cisco makes the best managed switches. You could also look into doing an L3 switch and route on there (don't think you can do NAT on most base IP images, not sure though).

 

[Cooky]

If you're doing VoIP, I'd highly recomend using a managed switch, like those pricey Cisco ones you've heard of...otherwise you'll have jitter.

 

[joshg]

Thanks for the comments all. IP phone system is a Nortel. Also I don't mind using something like a Cisco switch but I'm interested if anyone had any model # recommendations I could go look at specs on? Thanks again!

 

[robmurphy]

Most of the VoIP systems I've worked on have used CISCO, but this was done for the QoS settings and being able to use multipple VLANS one one port.

The systems I worked on all used Nortel for the IP Phone System. The phones were on a seperate VLAN ID to the PCs. One of the main reasons for this was to prioritise the traffic on the voice VLAN using QoS/diffserv. Without this the voice quality will suffer.

This was also done so that you could keep the voice traffic, including the DHCP seperate from the DATA side. If you are using the Nortel phones you will need to setup the VLAN ID that they are on, and they will then use that for there DHCP request.

Just my 2 pence worth

Rob

 

[xollox]

I've had some good success with Dell's web-managed switches.

http://www.dell.com/content/products/pr...aspx/pwcnt_2748?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz

It's gigabit for a good price. It'll give you some room to grow.

 

[cmetz]

joshg, SMC6726AL2 or SMC6752AL2.

 

[joshg]

robmurphy, great information thank you very much!

 

[dphantom]

I'd look at the Procurve line. I just put in a 2626 for a client and like the interface. Easy setup and all the QoS you need for VoIP.

Otherwise, Cisco 3550 class or better would be a good bet as well.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: dphantom
I'd look at the Procurve line. I just put in a 2626 for a client and like the interface. Easy setup and all the QoS you need for VoIP.

Otherwise, Cisco 3550 class or better would be a good bet as well.

avoid 3550 for voice. Use only as a last resort.

 

[dphantom]

Could I ask why? I would certainly prefer to go with a 3650 or 3750 but they are a bit pricey for a small business.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: dphantom
Could I ask why? I would certainly prefer to go with a 3650 or 3750 but they are a bit pricey for a small business.

They're like 6 years old. They "can" do the job and there's a large installation (2000 stations) I'm familiar with that use them. Seems like there is always something wrong with QoS and you have to run a specific version of software to not run into "particular" bugs and hardware limitations. If you do anything fancy QoS or security related they just suck.

I still don't understand why people would cheap out on their switches. It's the underlying fundamental aspect of a network (next to cabling of course ). As I've mentioned before if you bid it out to the top switch manufacturers they all come in at the same price. It's not that cisco is expensive, because a competent switch that will do the job from extreme/foundry comes in at the same price.

Buying 50 PCs at 1 grand a pop? Sure. But god forbid you spend more than a few grand on the one thing that runs it all. I guess I'm just used to the "it's the cost of doing business" mentality.

-edit-
NOW I remember. It was a TCAM problem. They're weak in that area. I remember now - the 3550 was released to address the horrid 3500XL line. It was when you started to use the at the time "advanced features" that you bumped into hardware limitations on quality of service and security/ACLs.

 

[dphantom]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: dphantom
Could I ask why? I would certainly prefer to go with a 3650 or 3750 but they are a bit pricey for a small business.

They're like 6 years old. They "can" do the job and there's a large installation (2000 stations) I'm familiar with that use them. Seems like there is always something wrong with QoS and you have to run a specific version of software to not run into "particular" bugs and hardware limitations. If you do anything fancy QoS or security related they just suck.

I still don't understand why people would cheap out on their switches. It's the underlying fundamental aspect of a network (next to cabling of course ). As I've mentioned before if you bid it out to the top switch manufacturers they all come in at the same price. It's not that cisco is expensive, because a competent switch that will do the job from extreme/foundry comes in at the same price.

Buying 50 PCs at 1 grand a pop? Sure. But god forbid you spend more than a few grand on the one thing that runs it all. I guess I'm just used to the "it's the cost of doing business" mentality.

-edit-
NOW I remember. It was a TCAM problem. They're weak in that area. I remember now - the 3550 was released to address the horrid 3500XL line. It was when you started to use the at the time "advanced features" that you bumped into hardware limitations on quality of service and security/ACLs.

3548's uughh...

Yeah, agree with you on penny wise pound foolish. Just know that smaller businesses have a tough time and that is why I suggested the procurve.

We bid all kinds of network stuff. Cisco, HP, Enterasys. In fact, I am replacing an entrire school districts stuff with enterasys switches in a couple months. Pricing was all about the same between the vendors.

So your point taken. 3550's are old, but serviceable.

 

[joshg]

Good comments, again thanks. Personally I was originally looking somewhere in the $1000-2000 range but can probably stand to go up even a little higher if need be. They need something that will just plain work, and work extremely well. So you mention the 3650 and 3750, when I go out to look at these there are many "sub models" of this, any in particular that you would recommend? There's a pretty huge price difference between some of them!

Also does it really need to be 10/100/1000 if 75% of the traffic is going to be internal, not to mention that the entire building is ran with only Cat5E ?

 

[joshg]

Also I forgot to mention, these folks have a distinctive taste for "overkill" I guess you could say, so they really want something that is probably fitting to the term

 

[joshg]

The two models that have already been suggested are

Cisco 2960-48TC
or
2960-48TC

So after looking at the models you guys were discussing, is there any flavors of this 3560 or 3750 for similar price that would actually be better for this application?

 

[dphantom]

Originally posted by: joshg
The two models that have already been suggested are

Cisco 2960-48TC
or
2960-48TC

So after looking at the models you guys were discussing, is there any flavors of this 3560 or 3750 for similar price that would actually be better for this application?

I think the 2960-48tc looks pretty good. I haven't installed any yet but looks like you get all the features you would need for good QoS plus some other stuff on the security side.

 

[kevnich2]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: dphantom
Could I ask why? I would certainly prefer to go with a 3650 or 3750 but they are a bit pricey for a small business.

They're like 6 years old. They "can" do the job and there's a large installation (2000 stations) I'm familiar with that use them. Seems like there is always something wrong with QoS and you have to run a specific version of software to not run into "particular" bugs and hardware limitations. If you do anything fancy QoS or security related they just suck.

I still don't understand why people would cheap out on their switches. It's the underlying fundamental aspect of a network (next to cabling of course ). As I've mentioned before if you bid it out to the top switch manufacturers they all come in at the same price. It's not that cisco is expensive, because a competent switch that will do the job from extreme/foundry comes in at the same price.

Buying 50 PCs at 1 grand a pop? Sure. But god forbid you spend more than a few grand on the one thing that runs it all. I guess I'm just used to the "it's the cost of doing business" mentality.

-edit-
NOW I remember. It was a TCAM problem. They're weak in that area. I remember now - the 3550 was released to address the horrid 3500XL line. It was when you started to use the at the time "advanced features" that you bumped into hardware limitations on quality of service and security/ACLs.

While I understand what your saying by purchasing a cisco switch as it is the core of the entire network, your also used to dealing with very large companies who have no problem throwing whatever amounts of money when it comes to buying new equipment. Most small businesses watch every PENNY. In my case, my boss told me he'd rather buy a cheaper switch (~$1,000) and if it goes bad, just replace it with a like kind rather than buying an ~$8,000 Cisco switch. Since he's the one paying the bill, I just bought two of the same kind of switches (which I will say that currently I have had zero problems with the main trendnet switch) so if it does go down, I can just swap in the replacement. My boss didn't think an hour of downtime for replacing a bad switch justified putting in an 8,000 cisco when in fact, the cisco could go down just as easily as the cheaper one. But again, this isn't a huge company with the type of money that your used to dealing with.

 

[spidey07]

kevnich,

I'm not necessarily pushing cisco, my point being that a capable switch from foundry, extreme, cisco will generally be at the same price point for it's capabilities.

I guess I'm used to a different world where the network doesn't have problems. It shouldn't EVER "go down". People cost a lot more than equipment.

 

[joshg]

My mistake on the above post, it should have read

2960-48TC or 2960-48TT

 

[robmurphy]

The important thing is seperate VLANs for voice and data. The QoS will only come into play if the switch is heavily loaded.

There are a few points about the nortel IP phones:

- They can be line powered so a switch that does POE, power over ethernet, will save you on power points.

- They have an ethernet switch inside them and a port to connect a PC to. The inbuilt switch prioritises the voice traffic.

- For a small setup you would be better of hard coding the VLAN id on the phones. The phone will need this to do a DHCP request with. The request will go to the nortel IP voice server and it will give the phone its VOICE IP address.

- If you have a PC connected to the phone, and this will save on switch ports, then you will need to provide a DHCP server for the PCs. This could be th switch or the router.

Power over ethernet will add cost to the switch, but it does make the installation easier. The switch will connect to normal devices as well. The switch detects that the device needs power and supplies it. If you do not have POE on th switch you can use the adapter usualy supplied with the phone.

Are you using the nortel BCM?

 

[cmetz]

Cisco's switches, like most Cisco products, are underengineered and have aggressive marketing claims. When you start doing things where performance matters (carrier-type environment, or VoIP), problems surface. The 3750 is a dramatically better product than their previous switches, but it too will suffer if you turn on too many features. Some of their older switches (e.g. the XLs) weren't even reliable as dumb switches in my experience.

The Extreme "i" switch line are much better about this. As long as you stick with hardware features (almost everything) they perform.

But I will repeat my SMC recommendation for OP's requirements. A 3750 is way, way overkill. But if the customer really just wants to throw money out the window, an Extreme 48si would be a better choice.