[tech] Ethernet switching gear

[David Cake]

At 3:34 PM +0800 18/5/04, Paul Marinceu wrote:
>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?

	When we evaluated spending for the Guild, which are the 
switches that UCC traffic goes through, we went for Alloys. We have 
been pretty happy with them, though we currently have one in for 
repair. They are managed and are more expensive - they run about $480 
at the moment for a 24 port, but you have to buy a gigabit module in 
addition (well, ours have fibre modules instead). People said bad 
things about D-Links IIRC. I like managed switches and think its 
worth it for future flexibility with VLANs etc.
	We are actually planning to connect one of ours to our new 
server via a gigabit fibre module and fibre to copper media 
converter. Nonsensical, I know, but the media converter gives us 
redundancy in case a fibre module fails, as well as giving us a fast 
server connection. Or we could just be nuts.
	Cheers
		David