Looking for a switch

airbornflght

I'm looking for an opinion from some guys in the know.

I'm in the market for a 48 port switch. I'm not sure what the price ranges are (what I should expect to pay) but basically I'm finally going to get some money to start a network overhaul.

I don't think cisco gear is a good idea for me since I have no training with it and don't want to overwhelm myself (unless you convince me I can handle it) but I was thinking $600-$800 for the switch. Is that about right?

I need a switch with high throughput and low latency. Beyond that I don't know what I could possibly need or what is even available.

primesuspect

let's start with the basics:

what is this for?

airbornflght

It's for a fraternity network.

Stuff that goes on:

• Gaming, online and network (xbox,pc,ps3,etc)
• Web browsing
• data transfer across network (node to node)
• Video (porn) streaming
• P2P and lots of bit torrent downloads

I think that just about covers it. Need any other info?

kryyst

I'd suggest checking out HP Switches. They are solid performers and at the higher end have advanced capabilities. They are easy enough to work with also through their interface when it comes to programming them on the higher end.

Trick will be just figure out what you need it to do and be realistic. You likely just need a basic managed switch.

primesuspect

Yeah you probably don't need an enterprise switch. As Kryyst said, look to HP's ProCurve line. They make some great switches.

airbornflght

Cool, I'm on HP's website and they look like really nice switches. My only question is which one should I get. I'm guessing something from the 2xxx series?

Can someone explain to me, or recommend me a book to read because I understand the basic ideas behind networking but I don't know what all the protocols do/what they are for and how they interact with the network. Also, what does a layer 2 switch do. I would really like a thorough, yet easy to read book that would teach me what I need to know to be good at networking. I would really like to learn the more advanced stuff.

kryyst

I'd suggest going to your local big book store and checking out some of the networking for dummies books. I haven't read any of them specifically but the other 'for dummy' books are pretty good at giving you a general overview of the top with non-brand specific info. However I don't know how detailed the networking for dummy books get when it comes to describing protocols and more detailed info.

As for the difference between layer 2 and layer 3 switches check out here but basically a layer 2 switch will do it's own bridging which means your data knows where it's coming and going from as opposed to a hub that has no bridging built in so every time it sends data it has to poll every port to see if it's the right one.

What do you mena by protocols? TCP/IP, SNMP, SMTP etc... or you talk like routing protocols like RIP1&2, Spanning Tree etc...

Cyclonite

We use Procurves at my company. I love them. They're very easy to use and we have never had an issue with them. Also, they have a lifetime warranty. Can't beat that!

airbornflght

yeh by protocols I was referring to spanning tree, 802.x, etc. Although my knowledge of tcp/ip and smtp is somewhat ambiguous. I think I'm going to go to the campus library today and check out some books on networking because I understand the basics behind subnetting and the structure of a network but I don't know all the cogs that make the machine run and I really want to.

kryyst

It's all well and good to understand the protocols but to be brutally honest it's not going to really give you a lot of help in just setting up a switch in your case. Not saying it's not good to know. Just that it's information you don't really need to know at this point.

If I understand what your setting up, based on what you've been asking in these threads lately you want a layer 2 switch off your router. The layer 2 switch will handle and intranet traffic between the machines really well all you need to do is leave the switch full open. If you get a managed switch you have the advantage of seeing if a particular machine is hammering a port, when the user doesn't think they are. This is a great way of quickly trouble shooting virus activity or failing network cards/cables as well.

The router in your situation is going to be the real beast of burden though and it's on there that you may want to setup QoS rules and/or hard routing tables if you need to smooth your internet traffic since it's always the bottleneck in a network.

That being said you could setup vlan's on the switch if you wanted to segment your network for security reasons or perhaps printer sharing or something of that nature. But again just on what you've been talking about so far I'm not seeing a need for you to be able to do this. Though most HP switches can handle what you need.

airbornflght

Well I've been thinking of setting up vlans or segmenting the network somehow. especially if I get network printers and I also think it'd be a good idea to move the WAPs to a separate subnet

depending how much money I get I plan on getting some more access points, a switch, and a new server to run windows server 2008 and set up IAS to handle 802.x and also run dhcp on it. But I'm not sure. Right now routing and dhcp is handled by ipCop. I had it doing qos too but it didn't seem to make any difference. But like I said the switch is the first on my shopping list.

But you brought up some good points. I don't even know what routing tables and static routes are, what they can do for me, or how to implement them. and I don't like that.

the_technocrat

Just get an unmanaged 48-port switch. With 4-year turnover at your place, you have no idea who will be available to manage a switch, not to mention there's no need for such a flat network structure.

You're complicating what should be a very simple network setup. Hook the switch up to the cable router, connect the printers to the switch (or have the computers share their printers). Connect a few wireless access points, make sure all the machines are on the same workgroup and be done with it.

2x http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1386265 switches
4x http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1648570 WAPs
1x http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1422504 Print/scanner
1x http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1241465 NAS

primesuspect

TT is right. You're making it WAY more complicated than it needs to be. If you don't even know what the enterprise tech DOES, why do you need it?

Sounds like you want to set up {insert buzzword here} for the sake of saying you set up {insert buzzword here}, not because it solves some problem that you are having.

airbornflght

Maybe so. but I want a switch with some manageability because right now I have no ability to monitor switch ports to identify users who are hammering the network. I want a switch with a backplane with plenty of bandwidth. Right now network latency and slowness is a major issue and I need a switch that can be managed. And I'm not worried about after I leave because I plan on being involved even after I graduate.

And as far as the radius authentication, that is my wet dream, it probably won't happen. An NAS is something I hadn't thought of that would be really nice but I have around 500 gigs of music and files to share just on my own so I think a 2tb nas would be a better bet.

This is a big learning experience for me, and the switches we have currently are at least on par with what TT recommended and they aren't cutting it.

the_technocrat

You don't need hardware to do network monitoring. We don't even do that at my work, and we have a thousand software developers spread out over two floors in downtown Chicago.

http://www.ntop.org/overview.html

the_technocrat

airbornflght wrote:

Maybe so. but I want a switch with some manageability because right now I have no ability to monitor switch ports to identify users who are hammering the network. I want a switch with a backplane with plenty of bandwidth. Right now network latency and slowness is a major issue and I need a switch that can be managed. And I'm not worried about after I leave because I plan on being involved even after I graduate.

And as far as the radius authentication, that is my wet dream, it probably won't happen. An NAS is something I hadn't thought of that would be really nice but I have around 500 gigs of music and files to share just on my own so I think a 2tb nas would be a better bet.

This is a big learning experience for me, and the switches we have currently are at least on par with what TT recommended and they aren't cutting it.

1.) what does 'not cutting it' mean
2.) NAS is handy, but keep in mind you can just share stuff from your machine. NAS is for stuff that has to be on the network at all times, independent of any individual machine

kryyst

If you want to ensure you have a large backplane then get a full giga switch. But then limit each port to only 100mbit speeds.

airbornflght

Well here's one example. Guys playing lan games on their 360's still have lag, which shouldn't happen. That's the most extreme case I can think of. I can't think of a reason of why that isn't the switches fault.

the_technocrat

bad cabling (damaged cable can look normal)
excessive downloading swamping the LAN
LAN games need connection to external server? (not sure, I don't have 360)
bad game software
bad device spamming the network
existing network infrastructure not designed properly for expected load
existing network infrasturcture inadequate for load

that's all I can think of just off the top of my head

airbornflght

Right now here is what we have

[Cable Modem]<--66.76.244.242-->[IP COP]<--192.168.0.1-->[Switch 1]<--->[Switch 2]<--->[clients]

Switch 1 and two are tied together with a ethernet cable uplinked. I know its a shitty solution because it can only handly 100mb/s of bandwidth from switch1 to switch2 but it's the best I can do at the moment with these switches.

That's the main reason I would like a little nice switch so I can identify problem users, get them straightened out, and also have faster uplinks (if I understand correctly)

And I understand that the ipcop should got a a gigabit switch and then to 100megabit switches for users but that is just overkill for us.

the_technocrat

Cable modem
| 100mbit
Router
| 100 mbit

Switch1
| Gbit Ethernet

Clients

| SX fiber

Switch2
| Gbit Ethernet

Clients
NAS
Network Monitoring machine (don't need a dedicated monitor/keyboard/mouse, has a web interface - just stick an old Compaq in the basement and put 2 NICs in it. This doesn't need to be a choke point, it can monitor the network as another node.)
Printer

Tiered infrastructure. If you reaaaaaally need high bandwidth between the switches, feel free to get switches with a modular plug and do shortwave fiber between them.

And keep the switches gigabit. You may only get 6Mbps to the internet in total, but there's no reason client-to-client should have to be any less than 1000Mbps.

kryyst

Are you sure they are playing lan games on the 360's and not playing through live service?

foolkiller

If you are really going to have 48 users on a single cable connection, you might want to look into a router with some kind of QoS built into it. That way you can give the Xbox players priority when gaming, while regular websites and other things that aren't as time sensitive will still load fine as far as the user will see.

Also, with 48 users, you might want to look at getting a second cable connection and doing some load balancing. I am of course just guessing at how many users you have, but it doesn't take much to overload the upstream on a cable modem, especially if you have a few Torrents going through the line.