Managed GbE switch recommendations

[watercooled]

I'm after an 8 port managed/smart GbE switch which supports VLANs. The new Netgear Prosafe Plus range looks good but only the 5-port switch is Gigabit for some reason. I probably wouldn't bother with Jumbo frames ATM but it would be a welcome feature all the same. Also I'm a little weary of Netgear switches after the bulging caps/flashing lights of the unmanaged GbE switches, does it affect any of their other gear?
Thanks

[smargh]

The web-managed HP ProCurve 1810G-8. Costs between £88 to £99 among the usual retailers. Can do 9216-byte jumbo frames. These newer versions of the 1800 have some nifty features:

- can be powered by PoE on port 1 (can't dish out PoE though)
- loop detection (*not* standard STP, though)
- energy saving (the old ones didn't use much either, though)
- SNMP (read-only)

A Lifetime warranty is standard on Procurves.

(I don't work for HP, I just use their 1700-24 switches at home)

[watercooled]

Wow that looks spot on and a good price too, thanks!

[Agent]

http://libertysys.com.au/node/61
http://linuxman.wikispaces.com/ProCurve+1810G-8+setup

Worth a read first?

[watercooled]

Would you say it's a bad switch then? Just the others he recommends are like 4 times the price. I haven't bought anything yet so I'm still open to recommendations.

[smargh]

If you can afford it, get the expensive ones. The person blogging in the above links is mostly talking about specific things which most small-medium companies aren't either bothered about or might be bad practice anyway:

- The 1810G series aren't designed for enterprise management in a huge network.

- The external power pack is perhaps a personal preference.

- You don't need to use HTTPS to manage it. After googling, I can't see anyone else complaining about slow HTTPS.

- Slow SNTP. I wouldn't care about that.

- Firmware updates bricking it. I don't know how common this is - I've not seen anyone else complain about this on arstechnica, and googling doesn't bring anything up (needs more googling though). This and the slow HTTPS for the same person might perhaps hint at a connectivity/packet corruption/flow control problem to the switch, causing slow HTTPS and corrupt firmware being sent to the device??? I dunno - this is just a guess.

- No STP. Fair enough. I remember one instance where someone has spoken with a few senior 3com staff who recommend disabling it anyway "because of the many unintentional problems it can cause." (citation: http://exchange.nagios.org/directory...-Suite/details)

- Forgetting the DHCP IP. Switches shouldn't be on DHCP anyway.

[badass]

Is this for personal or business use?
If for business use, we need more info about the network and where the switch will be deployed. For example, in our core network, we have a stack of catalyst 3750G PoE 48 port switches - at nearly £6000 a piece when we bought them, however for buildings/rooms that are not particularily important, we use Catalyst 3560 Poe-8 switches at a far more reasonable £550 each. However they are 10/100 only.
HP Procurve switches are far cheaper but are certainly not as good. We use an 1800G 8 port procurve on our IT test lab and that cost us less than £100 for 8 Gigabit ports. We haven't even got around to configuring it yet.

Tip: Avoid Cisco Catalyst express Switches at all costs. There is always a similarly priced way to do the same thing using proper catalyst switches. They are far more configurable and managable and you aren't forced to use the gay web interface on them.

[peterb]

I've just fitted a 24 port Netgear pro-safe. Seems solidly built and while Iuse the unmanaged switches at home, the prosafe seems a step up in build quality. However I think the 'smallest' Gb in the range is a 16 port.

http://www.cclonline.com/product-inf...1&tid=gs716teu

[watercooled]

Yeah a Netgear was the first thing I considered but I'm a little weary of them after the apparent reliability problems with the 5/8 port unmanaged GbE switches, any idea if it affects these models too?

Edit: oops didn't spot your post badass sorry. It's for personal use, for the main switch that everything will uplink to but I'd like to segment the LAN into a few separate VLANs for various reasons, port-based VLANs is what I'll be using.

[peterb]

Sorry - the one I recently installed was the managed 24 port (the link is to the 16 port version) as I say, they seem a little more robustly built.

[Moby-Dick]

a lot of the vmware guys use these as a lab switch.
Linksys SLM2008

( now sold as the cisco model , but you can pick up the older version and reflash the firmware to the cisco one )

good vlan support I believe.

[pardal51]

a lot of the vmware guys use these as a lab switch.
Linksys SLM2008

( now sold as the cisco model , but you can pick up the older version and reflash the firmware to the cisco one )

good vlan support I believe.

I was planning to get the SLM2008 for my physical VMware lab, in the end ordered a Procurve 1810g-8 (lifetime warranty) from Misco. Should do the trick for me in my VM lab

[watercooled]

Could you let me know how it performs in regards to the stuff listed in the articles posted by Agent?

[pardal51]

Could you let me know how it performs in regards to the stuff listed in the articles posted by Agent?

I think(hope) that for my usage (VMware lab) it will perform well.

Will update thread accordingly

[Agent]

Could you let me know how it performs in regards to the stuff listed in the articles posted by Agent?

Just to stress - I have no experience with these switches, it was just something I came across then looking to buy one myself

[watercooled]

Thanks for pointing it out anyway.