Which of these two switches

TriedandTested · 16 Oct 2006 at 09:18

We have an network contactor doing some installation work and he has given me the choice of the following two switches. Which would be the better choice?...or would you push for the ProCurves?

I've not heard of LevelOne before so am a little concerned at their quality/reliablity...

LevelOne ProCon GSW 2690:

24-Port 10/100Mbps copper ports and 2-Port
Gigabit/SFP embedded
Gigabit (copper/SFP) ports are compliant
with IEEE802.3z and 802.3ab
Supports virtual stack of up to 16 units of
GSW-2690, GSW-2494 or GSW-1291
MAC-based trunking with automatic link fail-over
Supports 802.3x flow control/backpressure
Non-Blocking full wire speed architecture
Web-based management provides easily
configuration via any web browser
Supports Port-based VLAN and 802.1Q VLAN
Supports 802.3ad port trunking
Supports 802.1p Class of Service with 4-level
priority queuing
“At-a-glance” LEDs for port and system status
monitoring
19”, 1U rack-mountable size

OR

LevelOne ProCon GSW 2472TX:
IEEE 802.3 10Base-T Ethernet,
IEEE 802.3u 100Base-TX/FX Fast Ethernet
IEEE 802.3ab 1000Base-T
IEEE 802.3z Gigabit fiber
IEEE 802.3 N-way Auto-negotiation
QOS Policy: Supports 8 priority levels ID for High /
Low priority queue
Class of Service: Support IEEE802.1p Priority. Supports First
Come First service, All High before Low, WRR for High or low
weight.
Port Based Priority: Support 3 setting, Disable, Low and High
priority. When set to Disable, the income packet will follow
QoS policy. Otherwise, the packet will follow port priority
setting to High/Low queue.
Port Mirror: Global System support 3 mirroring type RX,
TX and both packet. The maximum of mirror entries up to 25.
Bandwidth Control: Per port support Bandwidth control.
Per level 1Mbits.
Broadcast Storm: Disable , 5%, 10%, 20%

growse · 16 Oct 2006 at 15:45

Personally, I wouldn't buy it unless it were Juniper/Cisco/HP/(Dell switches... at a push)....

Get a procurve... they're very very very good. Any company can come along and offer as many features as they like with a switch, but not many companies are relied upon for their quality and support.

bitslice · 16 Oct 2006 at 15:49

^^ as above

heh, who do you let design the network, the IT guy or the guy with the pliers ?

Ricochet J · 16 Oct 2006 at 16:17

Get the procurves. Their user menu interface makes it a complete doddle to set up through console. They also give more bang for buck.

However, as said, if you were really serious, I would have advised for a Cisco Catalyst

TriedandTested · 16 Oct 2006 at 17:52

bitslice said:
^^ as above

heh, who do you let design the network, the IT guy or the guy with the pliers ?

Well, the HP switches are significantly more expensive with GigE modules so thought i'd ask here as i'd never heard of LevelOne.

Thanks for the replies though...confirmed what i expected.

hybrid · 16 Oct 2006 at 18:34

I;ve heard of LevelOne switches before... mainly used in Educational insitutes that i know of anyways. They are like a budget 'professional' range.

But anyways... go for HP Procurve. There 5300 series for a core switch is the dogs testicles.

bigredshark · 16 Oct 2006 at 20:15

3com is worth a mention as a quality vendor on par with HP, personally i'd go straight for cisco, with the 2950s and catalyst express (web interface) switches they've got all the offerings and they're price competative almost.

Foundry and extreme are the other decent switch vendors, though a little above the rest in price bracket and features

bigredshark · 16 Oct 2006 at 20:15

hybrid said:
I;ve heard of LevelOne switches before... mainly used in Educational insitutes that i know of anyways. They are like a budget 'professional' range.

But anyways... go for HP Procurve. There 5300 series for a core switch is the dogs testicles.

core switch?? 5300?? you want a cisco 4506, thats a proper core switch