James G. Sack (jim) wrote:
Has anyone else had such bad experiences with switches?
Consumer-grade network gear is crap, all of it. Bandwidth per-port is
all over-subscribed, it's unreliable, flakey, and unmanaged. If you want
something that's going to be decent, get something with at least 24
ports and management capability, even if you never intend to use that
many ports or the management. Reason being, is that anything with
management is going to be checking itself periodically to make sure
everything is kosher. On top of that, the parts used in its construction
are going to be those better-suited to long-term use. Keep in mind that
you really do get what you pay for, especially in networking equipment.
Keep in mind that if it comes with a wall-wart, it's probably not any good.
If you're looking for something decent, grab a used HP ProCurve switch.
They're capable, inexpensive (when compared to others like Cisco or
Foundry), and -- get this -- have a fully-transferrable, lifetime
warranty. Yes, that means that if it goes bad, you tell HP and they send
you a new one (or, if it's outdated and no longer under support, will
send you something comparable). HP still oversubscribes bandwidth on
many of their switches, but it's nowhere near the colossal levels that
the Linksys/Netgear/Belkin/ElCheapo switches do (sometimes this is 8:1;
that is, if it has 16 ports, only two of them can switch at full-speed
before the backplane is saturated).
Manufacturers I'd stay away from:
Dell (even the high-end ones) - they crap out under high load and
are really OEMed Netgears; Linksys; Netgear; Belkin; D-Link; and pretty
much anything you can buy COTS at Fry's or similar.
Cisco, HP, and Foundry gear can't be beat. HP really does have the best
bang/buck because a) it doesn't say cisco on it and is thus cheap b) has
many of the management features of a cisco device c) doesn't say cisco
on it and thus isn't in high demand. But, you can find it on ebay any
day of the week. Look for something like a ProCurve 2626. It's even a
routing switch! They go for around $200 or so used. In fact, I've even
got one at home I'd be willing to let go of.
Another good idea is to put your switches (and, really, all your gear)
on a filtering power strip (like a Tripp-Lite isobar). One that filters
both transients and spikes, and provides rudimentary noise filtration.
That will solve a lot of the problems with bad or noisy power. Really,
the best solution is to have all your gear on an online UPS (not the
cheap APC crap -- one that constantly runs the inverter, even when mains
voltage is present) so it'll trap and filter any garbage that may come up.
There are some things I'll be the biggest cheap bastard in the world
about. Others, not so much -- networking and computer equipment tend to
be in the latter.
good luck,
-Kelsey
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