I bought a Netgear 16 port 10/100 switch for $65 at Staples last week. For home network use a "dumb switch" such as this would be more than adequate. Features such as QOS and VLAN are found on higher end switches such as Cisco and are a little pointless in a small LAN environment.
These days one rarely sees MDI/MDIX ports. Once upon a time when one daisy chained hubs and switches the MDIX port (sometimes it was a switch) was used to create a cross-over from RX to TX. This could also have been done with a cross-over cable if no MDIX port was available. I recently upgraded all the little 5 port switches I had littered around the house to one 24 port Linksys (CompUSA $115) and the Netgear 16 port. I used a standard Cat5E cable to join them together and they negotiated the MDIX without me having to press any buttons, flip switches or use special ports. Frankly the state of the art is such that you don't have to know anything to create a sucessful SOHO LAN these days. It really is plug and play. Mark, G7LTT/KC2ENI Randolph, NJ http://www.g7ltt.com Rich Sias wrote: > The last time I bought an 8 port switch, it was nearly $500. Now some > are under $99 for 16 port versions. > > I am intending on using astlinux for router/firewall and will need 12 or > so ports for all my extensions, 2 FXO adapters, and several computers. > What buzzwords should I be looking for ? Are QOS and stateful packet > inspection only in routers ? Will any support usage of above from > astlinux ? What are MDI/MDIX are they important for an Asterisk user > and home networker ? What about flow control and back pressure ? Are > there any thing else I should look for ? > > After I wade through all the suggestions, I'll boil it all down to > something that I'll not regret for at least 3-5 years or longer. > > Rich Sias > _______________________________________________ > Astlinux-users mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.kriscompanies.com/mailman/listinfo/astlinux-users > > Donations to support AstLinux are graciously accepted via PayPal to [EMAIL > PROTECTED] > _______________________________________________ Astlinux-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.kriscompanies.com/mailman/listinfo/astlinux-users Donations to support AstLinux are graciously accepted via PayPal to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
