What should I pay attention to when I’m buying a network switch?

Scenario / Questions

Since I’m not a hardware expert, I don’t know what features make a network switch a good network switch. What should I pay attention, when I’m comparing the different models from different vendors?

Find below all possible solutions or suggestions for the above questions..

Suggestion: 1:

It is all about features, and the quality of the device.

You can usually check the quality of the device by looking for reviews for that particular device.

Features you want to look at

If you have a small network, you probably don’t really need most of the features, and a simple inexpensive switch will be fine. If you have high security demands, a VoiP system, a complex network, you’ll need more features.

Suggestion: 2:

Blocking vs. Non-Blocking Switches

Take a switch’s specifications and add up all the ports at theoretical maximum speed, then you have the theoretical sum total of a switch’s throughput. If the switching bus, or switching components cannot handle the theoretical total of all ports the switch is considered a “blocking switch”. There is debate whether all switches should be designed non-blocking, but the added costs of doing so are only reasonable on switches designed to work in the largest network backbones. For almost all applications, a blocking switch that has an acceptable and reasonable throughput level will work just fine.

Consider an eight port 10/100 switch. Since each port can theoretically handle 200 Mbps (full duplex) there is a theoretical need for 1600 Mbps, or 1.6 Gbps. But in the real world each port will not exceed 50% utilization, so a 800 Mbps switching bus is adequate. Consideration of total throughput versus total ports demand in the real world loads provides validation that the switch can handle the loads of your network.<

Taken from: http://www.lantronix.com/resources/net-tutor-switching.html

They have some other good things on that page to look for too.

Suggestion: 3:

Some other things to consider:

Suggestion: 4:

For a good switch I think there are only two options: Cisco and HP. (and I’m not talking about Linksys)

Objective differences:

Lots and lots of subjective differences.

Most importantly: NEVER buy the cheapest thing from the expensive (managed, rack-mounted) shelf. A managed Dlink will NOT be worth it. They are unstable, slow, and horrible to configure. Netgear will probably be the same. For managed switches, just go HP or Cisco.

… or possibly from the Juniper EX-series.

Features that you may want that can affect your choice:

Suggestion: 5:

Redundant power supplies

Suggestion: 6:

On top of Zoredache’s good list:

Suggestion: 7:

My 2 cents:
Select switches with passive cooling, in practice they are often more durable.

Suggestion: 8:

If a switch has the above features then it almost certainly has SNMP, but that should be a priority as well. Nice to know what’s running through them pipes.

Suggestion: 9:

On top of ‘features’ and ‘load’ that everybody else here is thinking about, I would think very carefully about brand…

If you are putting it within easy reach and deploying 1-5, think about Netgear/Linksys, if you are deploying these to a location you don’t want to go back to think about Cisco/HP. You pay a premium for the Cisco ones – and it only really makes sense to buy them if you have lots of other Cisco kit, otherwise I’d go for HP.

The other main consideration is management. Do you REALLY need to logon to it and look at the traffic running across it. Really..? It will cost you a hefty premium and if you just want to check connectivity/disable the occasional port, check temp/power, etc… Most decent ones (again, HP/Cisco) will give you that in the ‘non-managed’ version.

Avoid anything that looks cheap.

Mike

Suggestion: 10:

I can’t believe no-one has mentioned size – often switch cabinets are small, and switches large – especially PoE ones.

We had a heck of a job finding a quiet, smallish, PoE switch for our cabinet that would allow the doors to close 🙂 ended up with 2×12 ports of PoE (with 12 non PoE each) rather than one 24 port PoE. Gives a little less single point of catastrophic failure too.

Suggestion: 11:

I would say that stability is a issue, especially the smaller and cheaper ones can sometimes be buggy and unstable… unfortunately I have never found any good number/statistics on stability/”mean time between failure”.

The only solution I know of is to go with a known brand…

Suggestion: 12:

Some things that I look for that I haven’t seen mentioned yet:

Things that others mentioned that I heartily concur with:

Disclaimer: This has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed through internet. We are not responsibility or liability for its dependability, trustworthiness, reliability and data of the text. We reserves the sole right to alter, delete or remove (without notice) the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever.

Source: What should I pay attention to when I’m buying a network switch?