managed switch advice

[groovin]

i am looking to replace our 10Mbps switches. I want to put our heavier users on gigabit as well as our servers. Everyone else on 100Mbps fast eth.

i want to be able to see whats going on through the network and possibly control traffic as well as some of the other management features (web console would be nice). The fast eth switches should have a couple gigabit ports on them to link them to other switches.

is it better to have 2x24port switches or just to get a big 48 port?

i was looking at 3com superstack switches. They seem resonably priced. i was also looking at what cisco had to offer, but dont know too much about cisco switches.

any advice?

thanks!

 

[mboy]

No advice other then hoping you have a nice size budget (bigger then my budget anyway

 

[err]

If you want to do gig switching, be prepared to spend hefty amount of $$$ on your switch purchase

If you want to do simple 100 mbps switching, I would recommend doing cisco 2950 to the workstations. If you'd like to to traffic shaping and bandwidth limiting, 2950 won't cut it. You'll need something like the catalyst 4000 family with supervisor engine3. You can then get a blade that will do gig-e. and a blade to do 100 mbps switching.

If you get all these brand new, be prepared to spend more than $50K.

lets start with letting us know how much is your budget and how important is traffic control is to you.

Good luck.

err

 

[Kadarin]

Take a look also at the Foundry FastIron Edge 4802's..

 

[Boscoh]

Stay away from 3com....

As for Cisco, the 2950T-24 has 24 10/100 ports and 2 10/100/1000 uplink ports. They should retail for around $1300. The GUI on them is excellent, they have a lot of features and have some cool bandwidth usage reporting functions but no bandwidth limiting. You'll need to move up in Cisco's product offering like err said. Dlink has a switch (I think its a 3xxx series) that can do bandwidth limiting, you might want to look around on their site but be prepared to pay around $2000 for it.

Do your users pump out a lot of traffic? If so, its probably better to have 2x24 port switches both having 2 gig uplinks each rather than to have one 48 with 2 gig uplinks, you'll spread the traffic out more with 2x24 and your gig links will be less saturated.

 

[cmetz]

groovin, if you are seriously worried about performance, then you need to also think about oversubscription. 24 or 48 100Mb/s ports feeding into a 1Gb/s port is a 2.4:1 or 4.8:1 oversubscription, which might be problematic - depends on how much load you really have. If you have the budget and are serious about nailing the problem, get an Extreme Alpine, Cisco 4000, or Foundry whatever's their mid-range. That is, a modular switch with real backplane. They'll set you back like $15k or so. It's not cheap, but you can get a non-oversubscribed (Extreme) or not-as-much-oversubscribed (Cisco) backplane as well as unified management and some expansion flexibility.

Another possible choice is the new Cisco 3750 series. I *think* the gig and 10/100 switches are stackable together and the stacking interconnect has good bandwidth (20Gb/s was it?). I'm sure that these will be priced on the brand-new-Cisco-product discount plan, which is to say, you might be better off just getting the manged switch for about the same money.

If you don't have that kind of budget, then you're playing oversubscribed with gig interconnects. For that, look at the Dell switches. The PowerConnect 3324/3348 switches are pretty decent, and come with 2x copper gig ports built in. Their gigabit (5xxx) switches are in need of a product line refresh to gain the features the 33xx switches have, but if you have to have something now, the 12 & 24 gig port switches are probably okay. The Dell switches are very cheaply priced for what they are - the same thing painted off-white with a 3Com logo will cost you 3x more. The 33xx switches have a vaguely Cisco like CLI, the 5xxx switches have the old text-GUI CLI. Both have a web GUI, but you should bow your head in shame if you use it

 

[Boscoh]

cmetz, so the Dell 5212 and 5224 switches are actually re-branded 3com 3812's and 3824's?

 

[MysticLlama]

3750s would work, and IIRC the 3750G-24T with 24 10/100/1000 ports is around $4000ish.

Also, the stacking technology they use hooks the switches together at 32Gb/s, which is pretty fast.

May be out of the budget range, but it's full 10/100/1000.

On the other hand you could get one of these and a 2950 or 3550 with 24 10/100 ports and ocnnect them with Gb uplinks.

 

[cmetz]

Boscoh, no, I believe you misinterpreted my statement "the same thing..." - I meant similar in capability and port layout. As far as I know, the Dell switches are all manufactured by Delta Networks, who also makes managed switches for Netgear, SMC, and some for Riverstone. Dell appears to be the only one with quite the configuration that they have.

 

[Boscoh]

cmetz, I had thought they were made by Delta as well but when I looked at the 3com they look a *lot* alike.

 

[cmetz]

It is certainly possible that 3Com is also private-labelling Delta switches. I know of other switches where they did it private-label rather than in house. I just don't know that for certain. Check the manual (hopefully is on-line) - if the text-mode GUI CLI is the same as the Dell, that would certainly tend to confirm.

 

[groovin]

thanks for the replies guys,

as far as budget goes, the cisco 2950's are right in the range i want to spend (~$900 per switch). as for the traffic controls, maybe there's a better way to do it but the problem is that when someone downloads something large off the net, they consume much of the bandwidth and things start slowing down for everyone else. doesnt happen very often, but when it does, its annoying. our gateways run on freebsd so ill have to research what can be done on that OS.

cmetz, good point on the oversubscription, ill take that into consideration.

what does cisco offer in for gigabit switching?

 

[groovin]

boscoh,

whats wrong with 3com?

 

[Saltin]

There's nothing wrong with 3com Superstacks. I'm in an office full of them, and they work flawlessly. They arent enterprise class switches, but they do small office well, they support 802.1q and trunking, and they have an HTTP interface. Decent switches. You can pick SS 3300's up on Ebay for about $100-120 a switch.

That's dirt cheap. You can pay 4-5k for a new Foundry Layer 3 switch. There's no debating the Foundry switch is superior, but depending on your environment, it may not be necessary to buy FastIron's or Catalysts.

 

[groovin]

i think 4-5kfor a switch is overkill for our needs, but i want this next batch of switches to keep us good for 3-4 years.

i was looking at Dells switches, they look very nicely priced...

 

[Boscoh]

Never had good luck with 3com. Their products either broke fairly quickly or were DOA and their tech support and RMA policies sucked. This was 3-4 years ago, perhaps they are better now...I dont know, and dont want to find out. Just like any product some people swear by it, some curse it's existence...I fall somewhere between the two.

 

[cmetz]

groovin, Cisco's new 3750 switch line has interesting gig switches.

 

[groovin]

my personal preference is cisco. ive worked with their entry level routers and think they're awesome in all respects.

since i like keeping all my equipment from the same maker, i think ive narrowed it down to going either all cisco or all dell depending on budget:

Cisco 2950T-24 for the regular fast ethernet users
Cisco 3750-24T for the gigabit users

Dell Powerconnect 3324
Dell Powerconnect 5224 for gigabit users

 

[Boscoh]

That sounds good.

One note about the Dell's though: I havent worked with the 3324's, but dont expect a whole lot of bells and whistles with the 5224 though. If you're connecting servers, they'll probably be fine. But if you're connecting users and you want a lot of graphical outputs and management abilities of those users, you wont find that on the 5224 or the 5212.

This Cisco stuff is awesome all around except for the price tag. One note though....I doubt Cisco would ship your switches with IOS 12.19(EA1) but check it when you get them, dont upgrade to it if you plan on running a Cluster. There's a memory leak in the CDP protocol on that version which is enabled when you put them into clustering mode. Not sure if it effects the 3750's, but I know it effects the 2950's. Took me a couple days to figure out why my switches were crashing .

 

[cmetz]

groovin, Cisco is not nearly as perfect as some people make them out to be, but overall they do a good job. Their products basically work. The problem with Cisco is that they are just too expensive, because their market position as the leader allows them to be. Take a look at the price tag for a Cisco 2950T-24, and then take a look at the price tag for a Dell 3324. There's a big difference. If the Dell switches meet your needs, then you just saved a bundle.

The main downsides to the Dell switches are shorter product lifespan (that is, you better buy all the 3324/3348s you want now, because six months from now they'll be EOLed and replaced) and Dell's service and support really, really sucks (I'm no big fan of Cisco's TAC, but they're leaps and bounds better than Dell...). The main upside is cost savings.

Note that you have a 30 day return period from Dell. If you were on the fence, you could always try 'em and if they don't work for you, you can return them and look into Cisco.

 

[Boscoh]

cmetz, have you played around with the Dell 3324's at all? We use the 5212's and 5224's up here at work...for what we paid and what we use them for (server connectivity) they are just about right, although I'd like a few more reporting features on them if we were to use them to provide desktop connectivity. What are the 3324's like...I hear they are quite a bit more up-to-date on the features side than the 52xx series.

 

[groovin]

cmetz,

youre right, nothings perfect... the EOL is a concern to me since I want to buy stuff thatll last me a while. too many times have i heard of people buying stuff that was cut off just months later (and i myself am still crying from Red Hats recent business moves). I did check out the prices, and yes, Dells are rock bottom compared to Cisco.

boscoh,

thanks for the CDP tip.

another question for you guys: does 'fixed configuration' basically mean somethign will work out of the box?

 

[cmetz]

groovin, fixed configuration in switches means that it's not modular; strictly speaking it means no expandability or changability but often switches with uplink module ports are called fixed configuration anyway.

If you're concerned about EOL, Dell isn't for you, unless you just buy more switches up front. That could still be a lot cheaper. But I hear you, and agree. Dell is demonstrating that they don't truly understand the enterprise networking business with their current switch product lifetime of about six months. Where this really bites you is that Dell's supplier doesn't maintain any stacking compatibility from generation to generation... so if you want to stack, better get 'em all now!

 

[groovin]

cmetz, do you have any opinion on 3com? we use them right now and my manager seems to like them alot.

 

[variance75]

Is there a low price solution to bandwidth limiting? I have the same problem. With a t1 if someone decides to download a large file, latency and bandwidth is severly limited for others at my internet cafe.

Already looking into a snapgear firewall. Might as well try to fix all more problems.