ethernet and switches, was Re: [rescue] Mozilla Firefox

[Patrick Finnegan]

On Thursday 22 April 2004 22:28, Bill Bradford wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 11:17:05PM -0400, Dave McGuire wrote:
> > >I'm just sorta curious why you dislike ethernet so much. 
> > > Personally, I think it was a good idea at the time.
> >
> >   Yes, it was.  Thirty years ago.
>
> For people that can't afford to replace their entire infrastructure,
> $800 24-port unmanaged copper gigabit switches and $30 PCI copper
> gigabit ethernet cards (with a semi-non-sucky Realtek chipset, unlike
> their 10/100 stuff) is a damn nice improvement over 100baseT.
>
> Note:  DELL NETWORK EQUIPMENT SUCKS.  We replaced a managed Dell
> copper gig switch with an unmanaged NetGear copper gig switch and ALL
> THE PROBLEMS WENT AWAY.

I don't want to get into a flame war over this but...

While their managed stuff might (does) suck, their unmanaged stuff seems 
to do fairly well.  Of course, YMMV.  I'm willing to bet it seems to 
work because they use the same BroadCom chipset as everyone else that 
makes unmanaged gear, but I haven't opened one up to take a look yet.

Pat
-- 
Purdue University ITAP/RCS        ---  http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/
The Computer Refuge               ---  http://computer-refuge.org