[geeks] Recommendations on an Ethernet Switch?

[Michael-John Turner]

On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 02:00:32PM -0500, Dan Sikorski wrote:
> I have the same experience with "bargain" switches.  Ya know, it's funny 
> that you would mention both netgear and dell switches in the same 
> message, They're the two that i've had the most problems with.

I haven't tried either Netgear or Dell, but I've had my share of
wierdness with an Accton SOHO switch. It worked fine for about a year, but
all of a sudden my wife's XP machine started not seeing other machines on
the network and experiencing high packet loss. Swapping the cable didn't
help, nor did using a different card (I tried both Intel Etherexpress and
3Com 90x). Only way to solve the problem was to force the card to
10Mbps HD.  I had the same problem with other machines (FreeBSD, Windows
2000/2003 and Linux, using a mixture of 3Com and SMC 100Mbps cards).
Eventually narrowed it down to the switch, which I no longer use. 
Weirdly, one of my Linux machines never experienced any problems with
the switch and operated flawlessly at 100Mbps (it was the only
one that didn't have problems).

I now have a CNet 16-port SOHO (model 1600 I think) and it's been working
flawlessly since I got it. Haven't used any of the VLAN or trunking
functionality, but for regular switching it's been fine. Pretty good
value, IMHO, (cost the equiv of $80 or so).

-mj
-- 
Michael-John Turner      | http://mj.turner.org.za/
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