Recommend me a switch

Vertigo

Vertigo

Vertigo

Soldato
Joined
28 Dec 2003
Posts
16,726
Hi,

I'm potentially looking for a couple of 24 or 48 port managed gigabit switches with at least one 10Gb uplink port to link them together.

Thing is I have no experience or knowledge of 10Gb so all the copper/fibre/SFP business is confusing me a tad.

Can anyone recommend or point me at some options? Obviously looking to spend as little as I can! :)
 
I was looking at HP initially but they seem to be in the same ballpark price-range. What's confusing me is that it looks like the 10G uplink ports on these switches need the relevant SFP modules adding to them so the base price of the switch is only part of it. I'm not sure what modules I need and whether they have to be from the same manufacturer or whether any make will do the job.
 
Well what are you trying to connect, and what port type does it have? Normally 10Gbit connects with SFP+ direct-attach / twinax cables which are pretty cheap.
 
Basically need to connect the two switches to each other. We're looking at expanding our premises into the adjacent building so want to put one switch either side of the central wall with a 10Gb link between them.
 
Yeah, looking at HP, pricing seems to be around the £1k mark for a 24-port switch and then £600-ish for a direct attach SFP+ cable to link the two!
 
Actually, it seems that whilst the branded HP/Cisco/etc cables seem to cost a fortune, there are plenty of generic ones at less than a tenth of the price.

What's the difference? Any risks or harm in getting the cheaper ones?
 
I doubt it would harm the switch if you used a Generic direct attach cable. The issue would be if the switch does not recognise the cable. I think HP looks for coded SFP's so unless it specifically says its compatible with HP you may run the risk of it not being detected.

£600 seems a bit steep. Is that for a 10 metre cable?
 
Vertigo1 said:
Basically need to connect the two switches to each other. We're looking at expanding our premises into the adjacent building so want to put one switch either side of the central wall with a 10Gb link between them.
Click to expand...

What sort of network traffic are your clients using to justify 10Gbit?

You could get two 48 port Gigabit switches as an example saving a fair amount of money and use LACP between the two to increase bandwidth.
 
S2KIP said:
What sort of network traffic are your clients using to justify 10Gbit?
Click to expand...

Well 10Gb may be overkill but I think 1Gb is going to end up being a bottleneck. It's just general office network traffic but, with our staff numbers continually increasing (hence the acquisition of the neighbouring unit), we'll soon end up with 20-30 people in there and squeezing all their traffic down a single 1Gb line doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

You could get two 48 port Gigabit switches as an example saving a fair amount of money and use LACP between the two to increase bandwidth.
Click to expand...

Yeah that's an alternative I have been considering, more so once I realised how stupidly expensive 10Gb links make things. Is there a limit to how many connections can be aggregated with LACP or will any switch which supports it allow me to use as many as I like?

A couple of big 48-port units where I could add extra links to the aggregate as needed might be a plan.
 
My cheap home switch allows 4 members per LACP (so a 4Gb LACP link)

Unsure if there's a limit on enterprise switches.
 
Vertigo1 said:
squeezing all their traffic down a single 1Gb line doesn't seem like a good idea to me.=
Click to expand...

You can't just wave your finger in the air and guess, you need statistics. In a 300-400 user environment, I never saw anywhere near 10% on the distribution layer, we used 2 and 3Gbit LACP connections IIRC. Was some time ago.
 
we have 60 people in 1 office and 300 in another , 1gb is fine. depending what you do.

the only 10gb connections we have are from the servers to the back up
 
bledd. said:
My cheap home switch allows 4 members per LACP (so a 4Gb LACP link)

Unsure if there's a limit on enterprise switches.
Click to expand...

I *think* one will be a dedicated failover. It depends on the order of frames IIRC which varies between vendors/settings. Really can't be bothered reading into it this afternoon, I've had a pint over lunch. :D

But as above, I don't think 10Gbit is a requirement for a typical user environment.
 
Maybe I'm worrying unnecessarily. Granted most of the time 1Gb is going to be more than enough, I'm just concerned about staff numbers rising in the near future and getting contention issues when moving large files around and so on.

We're going to have to buy some new switches regardless as I'm running out of ports so I guess the answer is a couple of 48 port units and start with maybe two in LACP and expand this if necessary.
 
Buy 10gbit capable switches, get some conduit put in with a draw cord / blown fibre tube between the two locations, and bond some 1Gb links for now. If you fill it up then get the fibre terminated and go hog wild.
 
Aggregation on some decent gigabit switches should be plenty. 10Gbit uplinks for "Office Traffic" is ridiculous. Even with 100 clients simultaneously saturating 2 Gigabit of uplink you are providing the best part of 20Mbit to each client.

Ask yourself - What represents the most bandwidth intensive transfers in your environment? How often do they occur? By how many clients? By how many simultaneously? How much of an impact would a reduced throughput represent in a worst case scenario?

If you are really concerned take Caged's advice. Run the infrastructure for fibre and buy switching with SFP+ ports if you ever need them. Your 10GbE SFP+ module is going to cost almost as much as your SFP switches alone.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom