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Thinking of replacing Baystack 450-24T

Back in 1998, the office I work in was just switching to 100BT networking with fewer than 15 nodes. I bought a Baystack 450-24T before Nortel bought Bay Networks, and bought another one after the purchase when we grew beyond the 24 port limitation. Well, it's time for another upgrade and I'm wondering what direction to go in.

The first consideration is absolute growth. I really can't see the organization grow beyond 96 nodes (double) in our current building. We're nudging 48 with our office space just about at capacity and an overcapacity of network printers. We don't have any Gigabit ethernet devices, though I'd like the option of adding a few servers at that capacity for the back-office servers. Since the vast majority of my devices are 100BT (with a sprinkling of 10BT), the idea of a switch with gigabit uplinks looks very attractive. That or a chassis-based switch.

One nice thing about the 450-24T is the upgrade module. I currently have to support a 100BASE-FX run to a warehouse location more than

100M from my network core, so would need to find a way to replace that. The 450-24T hasn't ever seemed to support this configuration in full duplex mode, so I'm not too married to the current hardware. Any suggestions for re-using my fiber run with different hardware (perhaps just a 100BT transciever?) would be appreciated.

What class of hardware? We haven't really grown that much, and I'm wondering if manufacturers of consumer level equipment have caught up to my small-office needs? Netgear makes a model, the FSM726S, with over a 12Gbps backplane, cascading, and 2x1000BT uplinks. That's a bigger backplane than my current Baystacks, with what looks like most of the features (except for the redundant cascading that the 450-24T has...). Anything wrong with a guy with < 100 ports considering this class of hardware?

I've looked at chassis-based switches from a couple different manufacturers and can't seem to get the economics to work out when comparing to a couple of these Netgears at $500 per.

Any thoughts, pointers, or reccomendations?

Thanks in advance.

Reply to
John White
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I'd stick with the baystacks and replace the 100base-fx to the warehouse with 1000base-sx, so you can re-use the fiber. What is on the other end of that link (at the warehouse?) I was running 100base-fx (before upgrading to 1000base-sx) full duplex between baystack 450's with no problems at all.

I'd stay away from the netgear fsm726s boxes - I have several and they constantly give me headaches - the firmware is buggy as hell, and netgear support is CLUELESS. They can barely support consumer their consumer class junk. For enterprise stuiff, avoid them like the plague!

Also - the fsm726s lack the following features that the baystack 450's DO have:

1) VLAN Ingress filtering (A MUST if you use tagged vlans, IMO) 2) Many to one port mirroring - the netgears can only do one to one. So if you want use a sniffer to monitor more than one port, you can't use a netgear.

Also the netgear has problems with properly handling multicast traffic in some cases. Can cause big problems, esp if you run a mixed windows/netware environment. Yes, the baystacks MUCH are more expensive. But you get what you pay for.

Reply to
T. Sean Weintz

Of course what he already has is a stackable switch from nortel... (baystack 450)

I'd recommend the nortel baystack 460 if he needs that. I believe (could be wrong) that will stack with his existing 450.

Yes. But I would say ditching his nortel investment and switching to more expensive cisco equipment is a dumb idea.

Reply to
T. Sean Weintz

You might want to look at the stackable switches that Nortel and Cisco offers. It offers a resilient chassis in terms using the stack to wrap around a failed switch. But another you should seriously consider is

802.3af POE. Sooner or later, you'll need to deploy a wireless access point. Having Power Over Ethernet can be a life saver. It's easy to run a data cable to everywhere, but power is another matter altogether.

The 3750 series from Cisco may fit your need. They have 24 and 48 port varieties. Keep in mind that on the 24 model, only 12 are 802.3af compliant. The switches are all 10/100/1000-T capable. It also has small form factor GBICs so that you can reuse the fiber you have in place.

Reply to
Hansang Bae

In article , T. Sean Weintz wrote: :I'd recommend the nortel baystack 460 if he needs that. I believe (could :be wrong) that will stack with his existing 450.

The 460 is just the POE version of the 450, with no gig links.

The 470-24T stacks with the 450, but the 470-48T does NOT stack with the 450. Both have two GBIC ports, but the backplane is only twice as fast as the 450's, so if you are anywhere close to stressing your 450's then you need to go higher than the 470's.

Reply to
Walter Roberson

Of course I meant "newer" stack configurations. The model number escapes me at the moment.

[snip: POE]

Perhaps. But he stated that he's not married to the hardware. From a support standpoint - assuming he requires one - it's much easier to find someone with Cisco hardware experience that Nortel. That's a fact whether you are a Cisco lover or a hater. I happen to like Nortel equipment for L2 use. Nortel's L3 boxes have been incredibly unstable when using IPX along side IP.

Reply to
Hansang Bae

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