Looking for opinions/recomendations for 24-port switches

Mar 18, 2006 6 Replies
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Looking for opinions/recomendations for 24-port switches open original image

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?)


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A

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.

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N

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).

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W

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

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W

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...

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R

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
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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

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