Links and Networking » networking switches

How many different kinds of network switches are available in the market? And what are their price range?

admin — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 05:02:45 +0000

If possible provide the source of information for the later part of the question…
specify your answer in terms of number of ports and the maximum numer of ports available for single network switch…

To many to list on here go to frys electronics.com or cdw.com
and you’ll see them all…

networking problem please solve…. for switches?

admin — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 08:56:56 +0000

hi. there are 6 switches of 100 mbps & 16 ports are installed at my office. which are connected with each other. before two month ago there were only 3 switches. as we increased the number of switches the networking speed become slow and client database cannot be connect regularly by the server. So we are planing to pruchase one 24 ports 1000 mbps switch which will be connected with server and all the other swithches will be connected with this switch. all the nodes will be connected with other switches. I think this idea will be better but i havenot confirm about it. would u please help me the confirm this idea for increasing networking speed and regularly connection of application database from client to server as we are working only one LAN.

get a websmart switch as the core switch.
probably someone on network is using quite a lot of bandwidth.
Use the QoS function to control the bandwidth by each port/IP

Which switches are better Cisco or Brocade ?

admin — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 17:02:05 +0000

Help me decide which offers better computer networking switches. Ours is a startup company and looking to enhance IT infrastructure.

Since you specified networking I’ll assume you mean ethernet and would say Cisco. If you are doing fibre channel then I’d say Brocade.

Brocade is a storage switch company. Cisco is an ethernet company. I’ve used products from both

I have also been pleased with Foundry.

Do all internet networking switches handle internet traffic routing?

admin — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 13:26:46 +0000

I am setting up a network with about 10 ports needed for devices. A few of those ports are for IP phones, and so they need the POE feature on the switch, which is power-over-ethernet.

I am using a simple cable router which will be providing the internet for the network.

Here are my questions. Are all switches able to route internet traffic from the router to the devices plugged into its ports? Do I just plug the cable router ethernet output into one of the switch ports, and the rest of the devices into the other ports, and the switch will know how to route the traffic?

I know how to setup static IP addresses for the devices to have, so there are no conflicts, I just wasn’t sure if I need to be looking for a special switch when I am having an internet router involved in the mix. I wasn’t sure if there were switches that had a special port input for feeding the network internet, or if all switches can handle a router input.

Thanks
Great, Thank You JoelKatz.

Now I know that I can just look for any switch that has the number of ports I need and POE.

It sounds like you won’t be doing anything complicated with the switch like setting up vlans though if you’re going to have ip phones they really should be on their own vlan so one vlan for data, one for voice, one for management just as an example.

Once you do that on the switch, you need to set up qos so that voice traffic gets priority. There ARE switches that are capable if routing called layer 3 switches and are quite common though they are usually used at the distribution and core layers of the network and so usually don’t have ip phones attached but I wanted to let you know that there are definitely switches that route. Hope that helps!

How will multiple network switches affect the network?

admin — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 20:41:34 +0000

If a company is using multiple switches, just because it’s easy to just place switches in a room, rather than to wire cables from the wall-outlets to a switch, how will it affect the network?

It’s the difference between direct cabling to the wall-outlets and switching from the server to multiple switches to the end-computer.

direct cabling:
server => switch => wall-outlet => computer

multiple switches:
server => switch => switch => switch => computer

Will the multiple switches really decrease the performance on the network?

In your example, you only have one computer networked through a series of switches connected to a server. Of course, this kind of setup will never be as efficient as a straight link between the nodes, i.e. server<->switch<->computer, but it will be pretty close; this is mostly dependent on the quality of the hardware in use.

Once we get into situations where multiple computers are connected to each of the switches, then performance will be severely impacted. Not only will the switch have to handle the local traffic, but it will also have to "pass on" the trunk traffic. The trunk of each of the switches is the bottleneck. This is why enterprise networks mostly use Gigabit trunks (for main switch->child switch), and try to minimize (or eliminate) the daisy-chained switch example.

Is it possible to connect 2 network switches to multiple switches for redundancy?

admin — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 20:08:02 +0000

Here’s the example, a single server with 2 NIC with a single virtual IP connected to 2 switches A and B. From A and B both will be interconnected to another 2 switches C and D. From C and D to a single switch and from that single switch to a PC.

Is this possible in a networking environment?

Yes, it’s possible. I generally recommend using OSPF or RIP routing with VLAN trunking or a routing switch, but there are a lot of other ways to do it.

Spanning tree is another way. If you’re willing to make sure your single switch supports spanning tree and you’re willing to bridge the two NICs in the server, it will all ‘just work’. However, if you’re not careful, you may wind up with awful traffic patterns. (For example, if another device connected to switch C needs to talk to another device on switch D, that may wind up going through the server!)

Where do you want the intelligence to be? Putting it in the single PC is the simplest solution. But if your implicit assumption is that dozens of PCs will all be able to access the server, then that’s not going to work for you.

The single switch can also make the decision if it’s a routing switch. If you use OSPF and put switches C and D in totally separate networks, that works too. In that case, you assign the virtual IP to a loopback interface. The server will need IP addresses for each NIC too, so if you have an IP address shortage, that might rule out this solution.

But the short answer is, yes, it’s possible. However, these solutions have enough complexity that they should be designed, implemented, and managed by people who have familiarity with IP failover and routing. There are many more ways to do it wrong than to do it right.

If you want to email me some more details, like expected traffic levels, budget, any hardware you already have and plan to use, whether the is Internet or private, whether you have other equipment on those switches or all this is for one server, server OS, any specific requirements on things like failover time, and so on, I’ll gladly give you a free consultation. If you’re concerned about privacy or anything like that, email me and I’ll provide some references so you can see I’m not just some guy.

Can I put network switches into a sound amp rack?

admin — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 01:39:33 +0000

I am running a lan party (PC Gaming network) and want to be able to safely transport both my 24 port switches and a some cable management panels all in one handy box.

Would an amp road case designed for music equipment be suitable? If not what would?

As long as it’s a 19" rack it should work. You might need to pay attention to whether it’s a square, round, or threaded hole rack. Some racks for telecom equipment are wider (22 or 23" I forget which)

One thing to watch out for is devices that are only mounted at the front but are relatively heavy or deep. when you go over bumps in the road it’s very stressful on the mounting. You could break off the rack mount hardware. Much less of a problem if you have rails that attach at the front and rear of the rack. (which is a function of the rack mount for the equipment and whether the rack has posts in the rear for the back of the rails.

Is a 24 port switch for a computer considered a networking device?

admin — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 23:41:34 +0000

Or is a networking device a router or things that connect you to a network?

i will consider network switches as networking devices as well.

network switches and network hubs?

admin — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 17:08:55 +0000

what are the major differences and similarities of network switches and network hubs? which one would be better in different circumstances?

similarity—-both multiple port density of a single connection
difference—hubs are half duplex
-hubs do not break up collission domains
-hubs do not do address learning and initial flooding of interfaces
-hubs do not use mac address tables to ascertain the port to send packets out through.
-hubs do send every packet out every interface every time.

Can you use a standard networking switch for house phone use?

admin — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 18:05:18 +0000

My entire house has cat5e cabling hard wired to every room, but half the rooms are set up with the cabling as phone lines. All the lines set up for phone are spliced together using little white/red clips. Basically what I want to do is take out all of those clips and put RJ-45 jacks on all the cable ends. Then I want to get two networking switches and plug the main phone line into the first one and plug the internet line into the second one. Essentially I want to be able to take any line and either plug it into the internet switch if I want that particular room to have internet or into the phone switch if I want that room to have a phone. I would have to put RJ-45’s on all the lines so that I could have them carry the internet signal. I know that I can get the networking side of this idea to work I’m just not familiar with phone signals and am not sure if this would work. If I absolutely had to then I could decide which rooms I permanently want phone lines in and which I want internet in and just use the red/white clips for those rooms I want phone in but I would much prefer a highly adjustable system like this.

I’ve tried to be as clear as possible but I’m aware that its a somewhat strange concept and I haven’t been able to find anything on the internet about it. Just to clarify a little but though here are the main things I need to know. Any other advice or information would be a great help. Also if you would like any further clarification feel free to ask me questions.

1.) Can you use a standard networking switch to carry phone line data instead of internet data
2.) Can I wire my main phone in line with an RJ-45 plug (ignoring plug slots that there aren’t wires for) or should I just put an RJ-11 on it and plug that into the switch.

your networking cables can carry telephone data for example voip is one example but you would be able to route your telephone signal to all the jacks but all the jacks would need to be changed and you would have to figure out how to convert that signal