Managed switches and 'nix (WAS: TP-Link gigabit managed switch)

[Tyler Aviss]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 5:44 PM, Lennart
Sorensen<lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 05:04:58PM -0400, James Knott wrote:
>> Actually, it's likely only 2 gigabit ports.  You can use either copper
>> or fibre via SPF module, but not both.  At least that the way it works
>> on all the switches I've worked with.
>
> It has two permanent gig copper ports and two SFP ports.  It says you
> can use 4 Gig ports.  It is a 28 port switch (hence the 28 in the name).
>
> --
> Len Sorensen
> --
> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
> TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
> How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
>


Seems I've opened a can of worms on this :-)
Since it's only got the two gig ports (the SFP I suppose would be nice
if modules didn't cost more than a switch these days) it's not quite
as attractive as all-gig. However, price-wise it was still comparable
in terms of the last "managed" switches the price isn't too bad,
depending on how well the management, snmp, VLAN, and other such
things actually work.


Actually, along that vein I would recommend that anyone in a 'nix shop
seeing products listed as "Cisco Small Business" steer clear. Where I
previously worked we bought a few and found they're actually just
Linksys crap (which some vendors don't advertise on the site,
preferring the big name of "Cisco Small Business"). I don't remember
the particular models we got, but they were 48-port managed switches,
however the management console actually *REQUIRED* windows+IE+ActiveX
to configure the VLAN's etc to work. They had no telnet console. No
cross-browser compatibility, and a few other missing things like SNMP.

It seems to me a sad day when even core networking equipment is tied
to a given OS, but I thought I'd pass along a warning to anyone else
that has to deal with this. Not all vendors use the "Cisco Small
Business" label, as many are a bit more honest and list them as
"Linksys".
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists