Looking for opinions/recomendations for 24-port switches

The following is a short-list of 24-port gigabit switches, sorted by price (low to high) from $370 to $590 (street price).

Looking for comments/recomendations. This is for a small Windoze network connected to the I-net behind a SpeedStream modem/nat-router. PC's on the network will be a mix of 98/2K/NT. Netbeiu is main (or only) file-sharing protocal. TCP will (naturally) be used (mainly for direct internet access by individual PC's). Only major file-sharing app will be AccPac (Pervasive SQL).

D-Link DGS-1024D 24-Port 10/100/1000 Unmanaged Layer 2 Gigabit swtc Netgear JGS524 24-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch Netgear JGS524F 24-Port 10/100/1000 Gigabit Network Switch D-Link DGS-1224T 24-Port Layer 2 Gigabit Switch Netgear GS724T 24-Port Gigabit Smart Switch Linksys SR2024 24-Port 10/100/1000 Gigabit Desktop Network Switch

3COM 3C17304 24-Port 10/100/1000 SuperStack 3 4228G Switch Netgear GS524T 24-port 10/100/1000 Copper Gigabit Switch Linksys SRW2024 24-Port 10/100/1000 Gigabit Managed Network Switch

Haven't looked at gigabit ethernet cards for the PC's. Anything I should be aware of / look out for? (do they all have drivers for win-98?)

Reply to
Net Guy
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without a server, IMO GBE clients are pointless. A server with a GBE interface to a switch with all the clients running 100MB is what I would be planning on. I'd get rid of the 98 machines and moving to an all-TCP network. (i was once told 98 can be run as TCP only but I never played with it.)

Go for a managed switch.

How close are you to the 24 port size? If you see yourself hitting that wall, pick a swicth that has a good sollution for stacking.

Reply to
Al Dykes

They all look about the same, but you'll need to look more closely at the specs. The 3COM switch in your list has only 4 ports gigabit, the other port are only fast ethernet, for example (and its disconitued).

Some of them are managed (like the Netgear GS724T and D-Link DGS-1224T), I'd go for a managed switch over unmanaged.

Some of them are "last years models", I'd definitely go for the current version. A lot of them are similar, probably based on the same chipset so it comes down to service and support.

Plain gigabit is a medium improvement, if you want to see good speed increases you'll want switches and adapters that support jumbo frames. I don't think you're going to see a lot of performance with NetBEUI (I could be wrong though, I stopped using it after Win95).

Reply to
none

Dunno about the others, but I'd take D-Link off the list. I've had nothing but trouble with their products...

Reply to
William P.N. Smith

I tend to get 200 megabits between reasonably modern machines doing file copies over a gigabit network, so it's not completely unreasonable, and you'll need it someday...

I'd second the reccomendation for a managed switch, and you might want to think about PoE or other things if you have any use for that kind of thing now...

Reply to
William P.N. Smith

Anyone used Zyxel layer 2 manages switches?

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are very reasonably priced. I am looking at the ES-2024 which has

2 gigabit uplink ports:
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Randy R
Reply to
Randy R

Take out the NetBEUI protocol (or anything other than tcp/ip,) and there's an option in tcp/ip to turn on NetBEUI over tcp/ip or something similiar. Been a few years since I have used any variant of 95 or 98. I seem to remember 95 having several extra protocols running by default.

Randy R

Reply to
Randy R

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