[tech] Ethernet switching gear

[Paul Marinceu]

Greetings,

Work requires me to purchase a couple of switches to anticipate an
expansion and I'm not a switch guru...so here goes ;)

Since this isn't a huge place, they have unmanaged 24pt 10/100 HP procurve 2324s.
I'd like to get switches with at least a gigabit port to use for the uplink.
They're also willing to spend about $1500 on each.

Now, I've seen these:

D-Link DES-1026G 24x10/100 Switch 2x1000  	$533  	
Netgear FS526T 24x 10/100 2x Gigabit Smart Switch  	$527 

which look very cheap. They're obviously unmanaged. Would it be worth
spending more for managed?

And, of course, these have copper gig not fibre, which is ok. But what's
GBIC?

Can someone shed some light on this?

-- 
 Paul Marinceu
 http://elixxir.ucc.asn.au