what gigabit switch would be good for home use

[Freeco]

I'm building a new house for the moment, and will need switch with at least 16 gigabit ports. My electrician proposed a switch of Allied Telesyn (eg AT-GS900/16), but as I don't know that brand at all and we're using Cisco at work, I thought of buying the Linksys SR2016 for home. It's an unmanaged 16 port gigabit switch and goes for around €185.

But I just dug up a review about the device: http://soltesz.net/sr2016/ and it made me doubt about the purchase... It says the fans are quite loud and the switch doesn't work with jumbo frames at all.
I also found some posts here on the Linksys forum stating there are some hardware issues with this model. They were all replaced, but even then...

The noise isn't that of an issue, as it will be mounted in our garage, but a low- or no-noise switch is always better.
I'm installing a Synology DS-209+ NAS box as well, and I'm not sure how it performs with or without jumbo frames. I don't have experience with that sort of stuff yet. So preferably I'd like a switch that can handle both.
And are there really that much people having hardware problems with this model?? With (limited) lifetime warranty it can't be that bad, can it?

So I'm looking for someone who actually has this device, and perhaps can reassure me a bit.
Or anyone else who can suggest me another solid device in the same price range? I'm pretty satisfied with my current 5-port D-link gigabit unmanaged switch, but it hasn't got enough ports for my future setup. And I thought Linksys would be better, until I read that review...

 

[thiggins]

For unmanaged switches, 10/100 or gigabit, you can buy on brand preference, warranty and price. There is no significant performance difference among them.

 

[dumbfound]

I am in the same situation as Freeco. I want to wire my entire house so I think I'll need at least ~12 ports and I was wondering what will be ideal since there are three members of the household that are very internet intense users such as we need ideally low latency for video games and such. Will it be ideal to purchase unmanaged or managed switches? I don't plan to do any hosting of any sort just would like to share fires amongst the network and go on internet with low latency.

Also unmanaged switches does it become sluggish with heavy data transfers such as p2p and streaming media from the network with multiple users on the same time?

Thank you.

 

[Freeco]

@dumbfound: internet traffic isn't that demanding for a switch. I'd say any average 10/100 switch would do.

But I'm curious about the p2p and video streaming, cause I have such traffic myself. My internet is kinda slow when I'm connected to a lot of peers, even when my ADSL line speed isn't maxed out. Say my max downloads speed is 450KB/s and I'm downloading at 150KB/s, I really feel lag when browsing some simple web pages, even though I still have 2/3 of the line speed left.
I'm not sure this is caused by my current D-link gig switch or the Philips router. I suspect the latter but it can't be replaced as I need it for digital TV over ADSL.

@tim: so not 1 unmanaged switch can handle jumbo frames? But there should be some models around that don't have a whining fan

 

[MoralDelima]

There have been very good things said about the HP Procurve 1800-24G.

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=782

24 port, dead silent, 10/100/1000 and more importantly, link aggression.

and more about it

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=834


It costs around $380 US, but it fits the bill. It is unmanaged and supports jumbo frames upto 9k. Also, if you want to do torrents and browse laglessly, you need to look and see if your router supports QoS (Quality of Service). Quality of Service lets you say "THIS traffice (port 80, or web traffic) is the most important - make sure it gets 1st shot at bandwidth and THIS (torrenting, in this case) is less important." If your router doesn't support QoS natively then you can check and see if your router can hold third party firmware like tomato or DD-WRT and then flash it with custom firmware. Or get a new one.

 

[Freeco]

€470 in a Belgian local shop. Bit too pricy for my budget, but I might find it cheaper on the net, so... I'll keep it in mind.

I don't think my router has QoS, don't seem to find that term in the web interface.
And I don't know about any 3rd party firmware for it. I don't even know which Philips model it is, it's not on the label. It comes with the digital TV package...

 

[00Roush]

Just to let you know... you don't have to buy one switch. You can stack switches. For example you could use the D-link gigabit switch you have and connect it to another switch for more ports. So in your case you could pick up a couple of 8 port gigabit switches and connect them up with your 5 port switch. This would give you 17 ports to use if you connect them all together. 16 ports after you plug in your router. Going this route would be cheaper but would make things a little more complex. Figured I would mention it in case you were looking to spend less.

I personally have a 8 port D-link 2208 (supports jumbo frames and QOS) that I use for the gigabit side of my network. From my understanding switches like this one have a 16 Gbps backplane which allows each port to have 2Gbps or 1Gbps in each direction. This means the switch should not cause any slowdowns even if all ports are maxed out.

The example about the slow web page loads while only using a portion of available download bandwidth is interesting. I think this type of slow down could be caused by many different things though. Increased latency, P2P traffic, router, or your ISP could cause these slow downs on the internet speed. The ISP could be detecting the P2P traffic and throttling your bandwidth.

00Roush

 

[Madwand]

The HP 1800-24G is a web-managed switch.

The unmanaged sibling is the 1400-24G.

The Dell 2716 is on sale often and less than $200 USD. Web-managed, fanless, jumbo frames. Limited warranty. (I see it for 239,50 € now.)

Netgear has limited lifetime warranty on their ProSafe series. The GS116 is unmanaged, and is among the cheapest such devices.

Trendnet also has a relatively inexpensive 24-port web-managed gigabit switch -- the TEG-240WS.

If you want the comfort of a solid brand and warranty, pick HP. If you want the warranty but not quite the name, pick Netgear. If you want the cheapest web-managed switch, look around, and consider the Dell, Trendnet, Netgear, etc.

 

[thiggins]

Freeco. As others have pointed out, any lag you are seeing when downloading torrents and trying to browse simultaneously isn't due to your switch. I'm pretty sure (and I'm sure I'll be corrected shortly if I'm wrong ) that all gigabit switches are non-blocking, i.e. all port pairs can be active with bidirectional traffic at full speed.

A managed switch does not have more bandwidth than an unmanaged switch and vice-versa. Managed or "smart" switches provide additional features such as port speed control, disable, QoS and more.

There are plenty of unmanaged gigabit switche s that support up to 9k jumbo frames and don't have fans. As 00Roush mentioned, you can link smaller switches to get the # of desired ports.

 

[tipstir]

Tim,

I had to contact by email one China company rated no 1 in China for network business routers/switches, just to find out the switch I was interested in to see what was inside the device? They told me it had 4MB memory buffer and 10K Jumbo Frame all this in 24-port 10/100/1000 (20/200/2000 max) unmanaged rack-mounted switch for $112 USA plus shipping was $8 but still comes out cheaper than the rest on the market . There 16-port gig switch is only $93 USA. I still have too many nodes average 21 total so 24-port would be ideal for me then again getting near the 48-port max.

 

[Freeco]

Thanks for the suggestions. I've got a lot to compare prices now
I'm not going to combine smaller switches though. I think on the long end that's less power efficient than just buying 1 switch that has the number of ports I need. I'll just keep the D-link in reserve.

I don't think my ISP blocks or throttles P2P traffic, as most of the times I can download at max 450KB/s speed. It'll be due to my router then...

 

[Freeco]

what about Allied Telesis, as my electrician proposed? Is that a good choice? Or is there better around price/quality?

I just noticed the firm of my nieces husband is a distributor here in the region, so I'm hoping for a discount
I found the AT-GS900-16 (unmanaged) for €184 and the AT-GS950-16 (managed) for €270 in a belgian webshop.
Both fanless, and the GS950 supports jumbo frames.

 

[thiggins]

Allied Telesis has been around for awhile. As I said, you can buy on preference, warranty and price.

 

[bliko]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817111030

.... what i use, price is reasonable.