Network Switch Recommendations

[John Scott]

Can anybody recommend a good quality, reliable network switch?

I think I prefer Cisco.

[bratwebdesign]

Cisco or Linksys which is a division of Cisco.

[littleFella]

Originally Posted by John Scott

Can anybody recommend a good quality, reliable network switch?

I think I prefer Cisco.

For what particular application?
What speed?
How many ports?
Managed or unmanaged?

[Louis]

Cisco aren't that great. Look into Foundry Networks and or HP as well.

What's the switch for (home/business/...)?

[John Scott]

For networking 8 servers and connecting them to two fiberoptic Internet connections.

[littleFella]

This sounds like potentially complex connection. Things may depend on some of the following:

1. speed of the fiber connection (10 Gigabit?)
2. will the external connection be aggregate or failover
3. is there a need to manage individual ports (speed, security etc).

In case #1 is 10 Gigabit then I imagine it would be good to have at least 1 gbps connections to the servers from the switch (all 10gigabit might be prices, $80K fpr a switch and up). But then, who does the routing? Is there a router already in place? If so, how fast are the ports? Does it have fiber optic uplink ports? If it doesn't then you either need to get a media adapter (copper to fiber), or you may as well forget fiber opic ports on the switch (why throw money away).

I know I didn't provide any answers, but perhaps that will show you need to get some consultant's ass on the premises and make sure whatever you spend on it is not just a learning process, after which you will need to spend more money to make things actually work the way you envision.

[rwh]

Look at a cisco 4006 for a large amount of servers and maybe a 2950 for smaller amounts of servers.
Example on one of our 4006's we have around 160 servers on it, holds up very well, we have also have a second 4006 for this group of servers for a hot backup.

Got a place where you get the 4006 with all the required modules which would include 2 power supplies, lan module, supervisior module, and 3 ethernet modules for around 2300.00 could be less depending on how many ethernet modules you need.

The 2950 I believe I can get for around 450.00 it would be layer 2 though not layer 3.

Joey

[rwh]

For the neworking should be able to use cross connects between them depending on the exact need.

[John Scott]

Thanks for the recommendations. I'm liking the 2950.

[rwhsec]

What kind of fiber optic connection are you going to be using?

gigE, 10gigE, ATM, SONNET, FDDI, something else?

How much bandwidth do you think you'll need?

What are the hardware specs of the 8 servers you will be using?

If you are planning to setup a SAN for example you may need 10gigE locally and Dual/Quad/8way Opterons with PCI-X or PCI-E 10gigE ethernet adapters, but if you are simply going to host a few low traffic websites you are not going to need anything more than 100Mbps Ether unless you want to cluster the servers.

Your options range from a Linux router with 3 PCI-X or PCI-E network adapters + an unmanaged gigE switch to a Foundry, Juniper, Nortel, HP or Cisco Layer 3 switch/router.

[rwh]

John, remember as I mentioned the 2950 is layer 2 not layer 3.

[John Scott]

Dual Opterons and fiberoptic is gigE.

[rwhsec]

What kind of motherboards do you have (Tyan, Supermicro, other)?

Most likely they have dual gigE ethernet onboard ( copper ).

How many mbps do you expect to push? How many packets / sec?

Are you planning to use a SAN, create a cluster or use one of more of the Dual Opterons as Database servers for the rest of the machines?

[John Scott]

What kind of motherboards do you have (Tyan, Supermicro, other)?

No idea, what do you recommend?

[rwhsec]

Tyan S28xx / S29xx or S38xx / S39xx series and comparable Supermicro boards are highly recommended.

Some of them have 2 or more X16 PCI-E slots and PCI-X slots that can be used for high speed storage and network controllers.

[rwh]

John, did you get what you needed here?

Joey

[John Scott]

Still considering my choices. Thanks for all the input.