Switch Reviews/Opinions

[networkgoober]

I have looked everywhere for reviews on the N1548P Switch 48 RJ45 10/100/1000Mb PoE from Dell. I looked at the NetGear alternative (NetGear M4100-50-POE) and it seems to get great reviews; the only issue is the lack of a cooling unit.

Do any of you have experience with these switches? I am in desperate need of your knowledge. Thank you so much!

 

[System Error Message]

ive seen gigabit 48 port switches that use passive cooling. new switches are much more efficient to not need active cooling.

I use a fully managed mikrotik CRS switch that has 24 gigabit ethernet ports, 2 SFP+ ports and a MIPS CPU for CPU related tasks like management and routerOS. It is passively cooled and uses a recent qualcomm chip for the switch chip, ports, etc and has 168days uptime so far which was when i last updated and set it up and reports a temperature of 49C. Although it doesnt have POE out but POE out only requres cooling on the PSU and the power transfer chips.

Netgear make good hardware but their firmwares in general can be poor. I have a netgear gs724T which is actively cooled but even though i turn off the fan it still works fine. The only issue the switch has is that latency goes to 2seconds or time out for LAN if i enable jumbo frames on it.

 

[Cloud200]

Personally I'm an HP advocate when it comes to switches. Just my preference.
Choosing between the dell and netgear though . . . dell.
Too many times have I had to RMA netgear switches or slapped my forehead in frustration from the interface.
Just making sure you are looking for the following specs and not getting overkill;
10gbe uplinks.
48 POE+ 10/100/1000 ports.
Clustering but not true stacking.
External PSU support, internal one is not hotswap.
Layer 3 RIP routing but not OSPF.

 

[LoneWolf]

How are you going to use the switch? Home? Small biz environment?

The Dell is probably the better of the two switches; I have used both Netgear and Dell, and found Dell's management to be better. If you're a GUI management person, the Dell's UI will be faster than Netgear; if you're a command-line person, you'll likely find that Dell has a command-line, where Netgear has limited, if any. I haven't used the N1548P myself; in the past I used the N2xxx, N3xxx, and their predecessors. Dell uses VxWorks for their CLI, which is a little like Cisco IOS, but not identical.

Netgear will almost certainly be cheaper, and like Dell, will have a lifetime warranty. They don't work badly, but I find their UI to be slow in comparison. Dell also has Layer 2+ features, which means the switch will support a limited number of static routes; I believe the Netgear will likely be a straight Layer 2.

So in the end, it depends on whether you want less expensive, or more powerful/flexible.

 

[coxhaus]

With that many ports I would be looking for layer 3 unless I had a big department with lots of people and I just needed lots of ports.

 

[LoneWolf]

With that many ports I would be looking for layer 3 unless I had a big department with lots of people and I just needed lots of ports.

Why?

The need for a Layer 3 switch is if you need routing. If all that's needed is a 48-port switch, chances are the router or firewall is already doing this well enough, and the Dell is a Layer2+ that supports up to 256 IPv4 static routes (128 IPv6). When networking buildings with 300-400 ports, I only ever needed one Layer 3 switch, and the rest were Layer 2 or Layer 2+.

Most of my current client networks are much smaller, and a Layer 3 is overkill when you have a good SMB firewall like a Sonicwall/Watchguard/Fortinet and only 48 ports to network.

 

[sfx2000]

Most of my current client networks are much smaller, and a Layer 3 is overkill when you have a good SMB firewall like a Sonicwall/Watchguard/Fortinet and only 48 ports to network.

Agree - going with a L3 switch, in my data center, I typically don't have more than about 16 to 20 devices talking to that one switch...

a 48 port managed switch is likely overkill, as the uplink really can't support the downstream...

just me...

 

[coxhaus]

Why?

The need for a Layer 3 switch is if you need routing. If all that's needed is a 48-port switch, chances are the router or firewall is already doing this well enough, and the Dell is a Layer2+ that supports up to 256 IPv4 static routes (128 IPv6). When networking buildings with 300-400 ports, I only ever needed one Layer 3 switch, and the rest were Layer 2 or Layer 2+.

Most of my current client networks are much smaller, and a Layer 3 is overkill when you have a good SMB firewall like a Sonicwall/Watchguard/Fortinet and only 48 ports to network.

If you catch my post typically with that many ports you are going to run VLANs but sometime you just need bulk ports. It was not stated. Using a firewall or router is a very poor choice to manage VLANs especially if you are connecting lots of buildings.

PS
You need to look at stacking switches if you are connecting lots of users from one wiring closet. Some switches do not stack well. I had 400+ users run from one closet and fiber was my friend with a large Cisco switch with 7 or so blades of switches.