[Asterisk-biz] Talking of PoE ...

[Kristian Kielhofner]

Jerry Jones wrote:
> 
> On Jul 13, 2005, at 8:07 AM, jjones at quiddesign.com wrote:
> 
>> The fact that it is a piece of junk (FSM7326P)!  Bought two, both  had 
>> bad flash after a firmware upgrade (tried one, talked with  Netgear 
>> and vendor, and tried the other once a replacement was  here)...  No 
>> secondary flash either.
>>
>>>>     I needed to upgrade the firmware because the switch had MAJOR  
>>>> software and interface bugs to the point where it was unusable on  a 
>>>> fairly standard corporate network with LACP, GVRP, 802.1p/q, etc.
>>>>     As a matter of fact, I have nothing positive to say about  them 
>>>> whatsoever (although I think they do run Linux, which is  neat, I 
>>>> guess).
>>>>     I am sure some people have had success with them, I just  
>>>> haven't heard about it!
>>>>     I am somewhat interested in Dell's new offerings of 24 and 48  
>>>> port PoE switches, I would love to try those out...
>>>> P.S. - They're really more of a purple, at least here in the US...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> That's a shame.  I've always had a lot of respect for NetGear -  all 
>>> of their stuff has just worked for me in the past. Do you  think they 
>>> just released it before the code was ready, or do you  think it's 
>>> irretrievable ?
>>>
>>
>> I have several FSM7326P installed and they are working great.
>> There are a couple things to note though. First is I am running the  
>> open source code available for download from their site. If you are  
>> familier with Cisco CLI then this will be very easy to work with.  
>> Also I do believe there is(was) a bug when using this code where if  
>> you were using the WWW interface then you should look but not  change 
>> anything, use CLI for changes - my preference anyway. Also  when 
>> upgrading you need to wipe out the old config before it will  boot. 
>> They do have good documentation on their site for all this  and I have 
>> found them to be pretty straightforward boxes, but  definately run the 
>> newer code - they did have some issues with  minor items last year.
>>

	After my initial experience, my confidence in that switch was shaken. 
Even with the "couple things" that you note, you have to wonder what 
else is buggy on a product with such obvious bugs.  I want my switches 
to be ROCK SOLID, when I have to diagnose network issues, I don't want 
to add "Is the XYZ feature on the FSM7326P broken like everything else?" 
to the mix...

-- 
Kristian Kielhofner