anyone have a recommendation for new switches for our test lab?

[tom]

we plan to replace some switches in our test lab and I wonder if anyone can recommend a model. basically, we need 24 port gigabit switches which supports vlan and all bonding modes, especially 802.3ad.

thanks,

 

[willy1009]

Hi Tom, I use Dell 5525 gigabit switchs and it work very well and offer many features.

 

[hec]

I'm using switches from 3 vendors. Cisco, HP and ExtremeNEtworks. My favorite are the Extreme switches. They are rock solid and easy to configure and have a very nice syntax. Look at the extreme x450. On the other hand the cisco 3750G is also ok. With HP my experience is with some devices good but some switches do produce packet loss at high load. For example the 2848 is such a device. You should tell us a price. You should also look at jumboframe support.

 

[tom]

as you can imagine, our budget is limited. I never heard about extreme switches, seems that they are not too popular here - but maybe I am just wrong. HP or Cisco sounds better, but the cisco 3750 is a bit too expensive for the test lab. what about the cheap cisco switches, e.g. tehe 300er series http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps5718/ps10898/data_sheet_c78-610061.html

 

[hec]

Be careful with any cisco switches which are not catalyst. Th most of them are linksys devices. Extreme is mostly used in backbone and isp network. These switches are L3 switches which support up to BGP4. I think you will only buy new switches?
What about the cisco 2970G?

 

[udo]

as you can imagine, our budget is limited. I never heard about extreme switches, seems that they are not too popular here - but maybe I am just wrong. HP or Cisco sounds better, but the cisco 3750 is a bit too expensive for the test lab. what about the cheap cisco switches, e.g. tehe 300er series http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps5718/ps10898/data_sheet_c78-610061.html

Hi Tom,
i have experience with some switch-vendors over the time (3com, hp, alcatel, dlink, blade). For a small budged i think hp is ok (i have use an hp-switch for an drbd-test and got better results as with an core-switch from alcatel - but the alcatel-switch is now history). Also the dlink-switch do the job (but i haven't tested the througput (esp. with many connected ports).
The cheaper switches bundle the ports (e.g. 4 ports are handle from one chip - which is the bottleneck) - so if you need real speed use only every 4th port

For a bigger budget i can recommend blade-switches (i use this switches for 10G-connections and also for Gigabit to the client).
From Cisco (i don't like cisco) i know only the cheap linksys-switch (2008?) which is good for homeuse because of vlantagging for a very small price. I use this switch for my "home testlab"

Udo

 

[alain]

Hi Tom,

My University (Paris VI), was using exclusively Cisco switchs, but they decided to go for Allied Telesis, AT8000GS/24 and 48 ports, POE or not, due to the cost. They are reliable switches, with a CLI as they should, and a good documentation. They divided by two the cost of the network infrastructure with this choice. But I have to add that, as they buy a lot of switches, they have good prices. But even with public prices, it is much better than Cisco.

See :
http://www.alliedtelesyn.com.hk/products/detail.aspx?pid=636&lid=117
and (for example, in French) :
http://www.rue-hardware.com/prix/acheter,allied-telesis-at-8000gs-24,315741

Alain

 

[e100]

I have not used these yet but have been thinking of giving the DLink 3100 Series switches a try.
http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=635

You can put six in a single stack, 10Gbps per stack port using HDMI cables.
Two stack ports per switch, 20Gbps total if stacked in a ring.
You can aggregate ports across different switches, something I want to do for redundancy.
Supports up to 32 LAGs per stack, I believe these are the cheapest switches that support a large number of LAGs per stack.