[geeks] Managed gigabit switch recommendations for the home?

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 14:34 -0500, Phil Brutsche wrote:
> Joshua D. Boyd wrote:
> > How can that properly be managed without a serial port?
> 
> It's one of those accursed web-managed switches; it ships with either a
> hard-coded default IP or uses DHCP out of the box to get an IP, and from
> there you point your web browser at it.
> 
> It's basically an unmanaged switch that lets you set the speed and
> duplex on the switch ports; they typically lack more advanced features
> like spanning trees, SNMP, etc.
> 
> A *real* gigabit managed switch with a serial port and CLI still cost a
> good chunk of change - Dell and Netgear sell them for $700-ish US, but
> they are *not* high quality units. They'll probably be good enough for
> home use though.
> 
> A proper managed HP (2810-24G) or 3com (4200 series, forget the model #)
> switch with a serial console, CLI, 24 Gig-E ports, etc is $1200-ish US.
> As usual, new Cisco is in the "if you gotta ask..." price range.

But of course, things can be much cheaper on eBay.

I see a manged 8 port SMC GigE switch on ebay with a BIN of $130.
Although I can tell you that the fan in that model is rather whiny. 
I see the fiber version of the same product for $125BIN.

I see what appear to be a lesser SMC managed switches (the one I have
and refer to above has features like QoS and jumbo packet support) with
a BINs around $250.  Maybe you consider SMC to be less quality than
NetGear.  All I know is that mine works fine.

So, sure the stuff is expensive new, but if one doesn't need too many
ports and is either buying for themselves or can talk sense into their
employers, there are cheaper options, at least for companies where
failure is an option.  I suppose that if your costs of a failed switch
are so high that you can't afford to be offline for a few minutes while
to swap in the spare, then well, you probably weren't going to be buying
small 1-3 U switches from anyone anyway.