Another cool thing about HP is that they have full wire speed throughput on each port. Most Cisco's will slow down on the backplane as ports get populated so on a gigabit port you won't get full gigabit on the backplane.
The hardware warranty is advanced next business day exchange forever (yep free shipping too) as long as you are the original owner. If your model goes EOL and there are no more refurbs to replace in 10 years, you will get the new model replacement. If you go to www.procurve.com they have a service whereby they can assist you with designing a network with their stuff (and some of your stuff) for free. Dallas -----Original Message----- From: Ben Scott [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, November 14, 2008 7:23 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Network core switch On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 1:09 PM, Chinnery, Paul <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I wanted to ask the group for their opinions regarding other company's products ... > 95% of all network traffic passes through this switch which is a layer 3, > btw. 48 gig ports, 6 or so gbics and the balance will be 100 meg. Are you hitting the layer three features hard, or are you really just using it as an expensive layer two switch? I'm a big fan of HP's ProCurve stuff for layer two switching. It's cheaper than Cisco by far. They include technical support, warranty coverage, and firmware updates "forever"[1] in the base purchase price. As opposed to Cisco, where they won't even talk to you without a SMARTnet contract, and the firmware license is invalid for used equipment. The plague of horrible support which has infected HP's printer division doesn't seem to be affecting the ProCurve division, for whatever reason. I can't speak to HP's layer three performance. My impression is that they have layer 3 features, but it probably doesn't do everything you can do with a Cisco. Hence my question above: Do you *need* to do everything a Cisco can do? If so, by all means, buy a Cisco. But if you don't need it, why pay for it? [1] Obviously, nothing is "forever", but HP is still is issuing occasional firmware updates for stuff from the 90's. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
