[Asterisk-Users] cheap gig switch? smc, netgear, or 3com?

[Joe Greco]

> Best value in gig switches right now is Dell.  Go to Dell Small
> Business and keep an eye out for some deals.  They have a pretty good
> one going on now for their 2000 series.
> 
> http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/compare.aspx/2000_workgroup_gig?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd
> 
> *Not affiliated with dell.. their 16 port and 24 port are a great buy. :)

Depends on whether "value" means bang for the buck or boom for the buck.

Quoting from a message I wrote just recently on another list:

: Dell switches are made by a variety of companies, last time I checked,
: mostly by Accton.  The big problem with this isn't the manufacturers of
: the switches, but Dell - incompetent in the extreme.  Consider the case
: of the Dell PowerConnect 5224, a switch released in 2002.  Many people
: experienced cases where ports would simply vanish, stop forwarding, etc.,
: and Dell repeatedly played out a litany of "It's your network
: configuration" excuses.  I believe they finally finished fixing the
: contributing bugs this summer; see
: http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=pc_managed&message.id=2282
: http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=pc_managed&message.id=547&view=by_date_ascending&page=1
: 
: Now, interestingly enough, numerous other companies resell the Accton
: ES4624, including SMC (8624T), Foundry (Edgeiron 24G), and possibly the
: 3Com 3824, among some others.
: 
: The *problem* seems to be that everyone worked around some goofy minor
: bungling hardware bug in software, whereas Dell took about two years to
: work out what was going on, stop accusing their customers of broken
: networks, and finally fix the product.
 
Now, admittedly, we were talking managed switches, but if you spend some
time reading the CY2002 and CY2003 responses by Dell to reports of problems
with these switches, there's a lot of "your network is broken" and then in
late CY2003 and CY2004 there's (reading between the lines) a bunch of "our
firmware is broken". 

I don't think I'd buy network equipment from Dell; they're not competent to
support what they sell.  Having cheap hardware is only nice if it moves your
packets.

Trade up.  Buy SMC.  Often the same hardware from a company that takes some
pride in its products.  Or buy HP Procurve.  Or pretty much anything else.

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.