amcdiarmid - Slashdot User

Submission + - An affordable smart switch

Submitted by

amcdiarmid

on Friday September 29, 2006 @02:50PM

amcdiarmid writes: "I am looking for an affordible smart (managed) Switch for use at home, and at a couple of companies. I would like VLAN (802.1q), Port Aggregation (for uplinks between switches), and QoS/Cos. It has to be reliable, and monitoring (and gigabit) would be nice.

Any Thoughts?"

Submission + - Smart/Managed Network Switch comparison

Submitted by

amcdiarmid

on Friday September 29, 2006 @02:36PM

amcdiarmid writes: "I am looking for a Smart (or managed: E.G. Smarter) network switch for my office. My needs are not great, but since I'm also looking to install new switches for two clients — I would like to get familiar with the interface first.

I have googled for a switch roundup, but historically: switches are either commodity (non-managed) or Enterprise (expensive); no recent roundups show. Since the price switches has been dropping, and "Smart Switches" (e.g. some managed features, but not a complete set) have appeared as a class — this stuff has been dropping in price and is now affordible to small businesses & LAN party hacks. It's time for a new (findable) roundup.

What I am looking for is advice on which switch I should settle on: The features I'm looking for are(at least) reliablity, 24-ports (10/100/1000), minimal management, and features such as:
802.1q (VLANs)
802.1d (Spanning Tree — to avoid broadcast storms when someone puts a plug in the wrong spot)
802.1p (Class of Service)
802.3ad (Port Trunking / aggregation — for uplinks between switches)
Authentication (Radius preferred, Port Based acceptible)
QoS (Quality of Service)
SNMP 1-3 (Snimple Network Management Protocol — I've seen some VM appliances at VMWare that I think could be well used.)
Jumbo Frames
more?....

Essentially, I am looking for a switch to handle heavy file transfer; VoIP; Bit-Torrent. The generic use will be File Transfer and VoIP. I would also like to have bit-torrent and ftp traffic assigned to a lower QoS, with VoIP at a higher QoS — and I would like to have un-authenticated clients driven to a seperate VLAN.

The typical smart switch I see at newegg, and CDW starts at about $300 (for example: http://www.netgear.com/Products/Switches/SmartSwit ches/GS724T.aspx?detail=Specifications OR http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=329) from D-Link, Linksys, SMC, and Netgear. (SMC switches are a bit cheaper, but I swore off them years ago for bad service, should I recant?) I suspect that the real price for what I'm looking for may be higher, but would like to keep it under $450.

I figure with all the network engineers (and people hosting LAN parties), there must be a lot of experience as to who has a good price, reliability, feature, and service trade off. Lets make that implicit knowledge explicit;)"

Submission + - 1st entirely comp. designed car sets speed record

Submitted by on Wednesday August 23, 2006 @12:43PM

amcdiarmid writes: Several sources are reporting that the first entirely computer designed car (JCB Dieselmax) has broken a diesel speed record of 236MPH at a speed of 328MPH. British team (Driver: Andy Green, has other records) at Bonneville salt flats.

News reports:
Peterborough Today: http://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.as px?SectionID=845&ArticleID=1713845
Google News Link: http://www.google.com/search?lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 &q=The%20JCB%20Dieselmax

Website for the JCB Dieselmax: http://www.jcbdieselmax.com/html/home.php ... now stating 350MPH

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