Selecting Switch for high simultaneous loads

[transam617]

I am looking for a 16+ port switch to replace my mish-mash of old switches (mostly 4-8 port ancient linksys and netgear) with one single switch.

Dont really care for having managed features.

One thing I do want to screen for however, is the ability for the switch to handle high LAN bandwidth, without limiting the WAN to LAN Bandwidth from my router/modem.

I have 3-4 PC's running for twitch streaming, with the game PC to stream PC running NDI SDK over the switch. It ends up being a 140 Mbps load for just that stream but I am not sure that that is a maximum or just what I see when I check it occasionally. Then the stream PC compresses and uploads at ~10Mbps to Wan, and a third pc is pulling that stream down from the service at the same rate for monitoring.

I just want to make sure I get a switch that can handle these higher LAN loads, while potentially serving larger downloads from Wan-LAN at the same time.

I have read that this is the switches "backplane speed", or its capacity to switch total traffic. I know I'm probably not approaching 1000 Gbps internally switched traffic yet, but I'd at least like to select a switch based on this spec.

What type of switch brand/model should I be looking at?

 

[coxhaus]

How fast is your internet? Big boy switches usually come in a 24 port models not 16 ports. The fastest switches I know are the pro Cisco switches but those are real expensive for home use. Cisco makes a small business line of switches. The fastest ones are the SG550 switches and then the next fastest are the Cisco SG350 switches. I think Cisco makes a smaller one in the 200 series which I have not used. I doubt you can max out any one of these switches.

Having all your switch ports on 1 backplane is a good thing.

 

[Trip]

You might not care for having managed features, but all the fastest switches with the highest-throughput are going to be some level of managed. Of the full list of switch makers, IMHO the best ones with a product usable for your needs are: Allied Telesis, Cisco, Extreme and HPE/Aruba. I've excluded niche-based stuff like Arista, Brocade and Juniper (enterprise only, too technical) and also "faux" enterprise brands which IMHO lack the fit and finish in real-world use (Netgear (yes, even Netgear), D-Link, TP-Link, Buffalo, TrendNet, Ubiquiti, Mikrotik). Those "yes" and "no" lists may be a bit harsh, but I stand by them.

Of that list of four brands, I'd narrow it to Cisco SG250 or SG350 (as @coxhaus eluded to) or HPE OfficeConnect 1820 or 1920S. Both are primarily meant to be web-managed, which makes it easier for those not needing/wanting managed features. The SG stuff isn't real IOS, nor is OfficeConnect full Comware or ArubaOS, but both platforms have backplane, buffer and fabric capacities that are usually well beyond the maximum requirements of almost any SOHO network. You will likely want a 24-port model of any of the above.

 

[MichaelCG]

At the rates you mentioned, any current $25 switch can handle what you asked for. Now...as others have stated, there are other reasons to get a fancier switch.

Just a quick search on Newegg for 16-24 port gig switches turned up several options that are under $100 that will meet the basic requirement you laid out. Pushing around a couple hundred Mbps is not a big task these days. You want to start talking about have 12-16 ports running 800Mbps each? Yeah, maybe some of the more basic switches will start to show some issues.

 

[abailey]

Almost all modern switches that are gigabit speed would work fine. As long as the switching capacity is twice the port count on a gigabit switch, you are good to go. I guess you could also look at packet forwarding rate, but for a home network I would not worry about it. Even most cheap switches have a respectable forwarding rate. Here is an example: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004ELA5W4/?tag=snbforums-20
The Specs are
Switching Capacity 48Gbps
Packet Forwarding Rate 35.7Mpps

Now I like managed switches. They give lots of stats and things besides the advanced management features. But I don't find them faster.

Note: I am not saying to get the above switch necessarily. I am just stating that inexpensive switches like it should work just fine for your needs.

 

[transam617]

Thanks for the help everyone. Yes I agree I'm probably overthinking this as my use case isnt really very "heavy" in terms of bandwidth.

My internet is just your regular old 120/12 cable.

I think Ill go with a Cisco SG200-26 or SG250-18.

Forgot to mention this is for rackmount.

 

[Trip]

I think Ill go with a Cisco SG200-26 or SG250-18.

Good call. I'd go with at least the 250-18, as it's a more current product (also a great deal at <$150 a lot of places online right now).