I like Candela Network, when they have something it's commonly a good price. cisco<$1000 for 24 gig ports of a modern series http://www.candelanetwork.com/used/Cisco/WS-C2970G-24T-E_Switch.asp?part=WS- C2970G-24T-E We generally steer clear of Foundry (now brocade) as we've had too many bad experiences with a variety of their lines. I have seen a number of customers use Dell switches and have not really heard anything negative about them. -----Original Message----- From: tclug-list-bounces at mn-linux.org [mailto:tclug-list-bounces at mn-linux.org] On Behalf Of Josh Paetzel Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2010 12:31 PM To: tclug-list at mn-linux.org Subject: Re: [tclug-list] VLAN Switches On Tuesday 24 August 2010 11:41:20 J Georgius wrote: > Well I'll have a looksy at Dell and thanks for the input, I do like the > DPDT and paper clip idea, but i'm not very good at high frequency design > yet. > > JG There's a pretty big jump in gigE switches, with a very confusing middle ground. Essentially you have gigE switches designed for home use, where you have several computers all linking at gigE, no VLANs, no STP, and fairly rare bursts of high traffic between two hosts. Then you have gigE switches designed for full wirespeed N-way gigE and the capability to process VLAN tags and STP on every port. If that comes to you in a blue box with cisco painted on the side you can expect them to be several thousand dollars. If you go with an alternative supplier, you will still spend 4 figures, but it will be closer to a grand. Our core switches at work are Foundry FESX448+2XG's, after the 10gig fiber modules to link them I think they were $1900 each. The confusing middle ground is when some features are added to a $100 home gigE switch, the price gets into the $300 range, and you have VLAN capability, STP, a web gui management interface, maybe a serial port and CLI. Netgear, Dell, SMC, dlink and many others make these switches. Some people have good luck with them, some don't. A lot of it breaks down to usage. They don't have enough processor to process 12 ports doing wirespeed gigE with STP and VLAN tagging, if you try to make them do that, they'll tip over. They can also tip over because it's a $300 Dlink and that's just what you get. Moral of the story, you get what you paid for. I've had remarkably good luck on occasion, but recognize that it's just that, luck. -- Thanks, Josh Paetzel