New Switch to learn on?

[krnmastersgt]

I've felt myself wanting to get my feet wet in terms of more advanced networking equipment, I deal with some managed switches and blade servers at work but it's mostly managed by a corporate location and I'm just the one that does the in-person troubleshoot and fixes. So I don't normally get to play around with the configuration of the switches and routers.

I've recently had to pick up a new switch for the home network, was about to just grab a Netgear GS116 then saw the E variant for a bit more and some basic QoS and VLAN options and picked up both. After toying with what the E variant has it doesn't seem to have much for me to do (granted my home network doesn't even come close to needing it yet) but was wondering if there was a well known series/model that one would recommend for how to learn to deal with fully managed switches.

If necessary I don't mind springing for a much more expensive model, just want to know what's good in the market or if there's a good model flying around for cheap people have experience with that I could use to learn with. May or may not attach to home network.

PS: Or a just another resource that people find has useful information, online articles or books would be preferred.

 

[XavierMace]

"More advanced" networking equipment more often than not means Cisco. Cisco 2970's are 24 port managed gigabit switches available used for around $150. If you don't want/need gigabit, you can pickup older Cisco switches for next to nothing on eBay.

 

[JackMDS]

http://www.networkworld.com/article/2223176/cisco-subnet/six-free-cisco-labs.html

 

[shadowman724]

Instead of buying expensive switches, I suggest you start learning about Cisco switching theory first. Cisco has the largest market share in switching (check this slide). Take your time to learn the foundations, because, even if you face "big" switches, the principles are almost the same.
Start with CiscoPress books such as LAN Switching First-Step
And for practicing, download GNS3. It's free and lets you practice basic switching features.

 

[avos]

More interesting from a home lab perspective is probably http://openvswitch.org/. It is a lot cheaper to spin up a bunch of virtual machines and play with how they connect to each other.

 

[rchunter]

Maybe a lower end HP Procurve? 1810 or 1910. I have an 1810-24g v2. I've been happy with it. Granted i'm not doing anything fancy just running a bunch of wired devices on my home network. I do have a couple different bonded servers running from it though.