[asterisk-users] Any quiet 24 port POE switches out there?

[shadowym]

High end Cisco 24port PoE switches make noise too but at least they have a
variable speed fan so if your not loading the switch the fan will run
quieter.   It's still gonna be noisy for running on a desktop near people.

No way around it.  Any 24port PoE switch will need a fan and make lot's of
noise.  I would look for something that has a variable speed fan so if your
only using a few ports as PoE it will be quieter.  If you don't need 24 PoE
ports then go for the lower PoE port options mentioned

-----Original Message-----
From: Anselm Martin Hoffmeister [mailto:anselm at hoffmeister-online.de] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 4:25 PM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Any quiet 24 port POE switches out there?

Am Mittwoch, den 03.01.2007, 16:51 -0600 schrieb John French:
> I have an upcoming install which places the switch close to some 
> employees in a quiet work environment.  Can anyone recommend a quiet
> 24 port POE switch?  The Linksys SRW224P behind me right now would be 
> objectionable, I'm sure.

I had to browse through the list of switches on the market recently for
different features.

Most switches do not feature an "acoustic" entry in their description.
Even those described as desktop devices... and just with it being named a
desktop device does not necessarily give you a silent device, au contraire.

All I found was the Nortel BAS220 48T (with 24 out of 48 ports PoE
compliant), nominal 43.8 dB on the datasheet. I do not know that device, but
noise information on PoE switches seems not to be a thing that manufacturers
are proud of.

I guess building a 1u-switch with an included 300W++ power adaptor requires
active cooling, and the smaller the fans, the noisier the whirl.

Maybe using several, smaller switches could do the trick for you. Brian Roy
mentioned the Netgear FS108p (with external power adaptor,
noiseless) as 8-port device. There is also a "larger brother" of it, the
FS116P, which also comes with an external power supply, does PoE on eight of
its 16 ports. I have no idea of your overall bandwidth requirements, but if
it is only about phones, 100 MBit should be by far sufficient for those 20
devices, so you could cascade switches (like plugging two FS108p into
non-PoE ports on a single FS116P, for instance). This is of course the
cheapo way of doing it. Getting a proper multi-port switch, perhaps even a
"real brand" one would be (ask the drooling sales droids out there) would be
the real deal.

<rant>
Talking about NetGear switches, I once bought a 24port Gigabit Netgear
switch, noiseless, external PSU. It was meant to be screwed to a table from
below (in a classroom environment) with four metal brackets. The switch kept
crashing (not letting any data through) in that environment, situation only
changed when mounting that switch to a wall (with the
CAT6 cables hanging straight down from the plugs) - temperature problem
(which was "not bad enough" to go into warranty exchange. "Just do not use
the switch in a hot environment". 20°C in a boring computer lab) On a
non-PoE device, with far less than 300W power to go through.
</rant>

I personally do not trust wall-wart (a.k.a. external power supply) switches
too much. I do not think it is a problem in principle, but those devices
with internal power supply just tend to be better for me.
YMMV. 

If you find something worthy, with a decent sound, please report back to the
list so others can share a good experience.

BR
Anselm