I’m looking for a good Cisco switch that allows me to specify port bandwidth with a little more granularity than the standard 10Mbps/100Mbps, etc. Ideally, I would be able to specify a number in kilobits if possible, and support a gigabit (fiber and/or copper) uplink.

I get a good deal on Cisco equipment, that is why I prefer Cisco, but if you know of another brand, please don’t omit it from your posting.

catalyst 3548


Any catalyst (enterprise series) running IOS would work nicely.

How many ports do you need? The 3548 can did gig-e and has 48 ports.

I agree with the Cisco Catalyst reccommendation - excellect choice.

Just FYI, if you're looking for a good switch cheap. I just bought a Planex off of eBay. Planex is Japanese primarily. The model I bought 24 10/100 managed with dual gig-e module slots offers vlans, web and telnet interfaces, trunking and such. I paid a whopping $63 plus $20 shipping from California. Took me no time to figure out how to get in even though the manuals were in Japanese. All the menus are in english, and so is the web interface - which has some nice features. The only shortcoming that I would have liked to have is the ability to specify data rates other than 10/100 HD/FD. It may be in there somewhere I just haven't found it yet. It does do prioritization QoS - found that. Pretty nice for the price. And it is a 1U rack mountable unit.

Originally posted by labgeek
I agree with the Cisco Catalyst reccommendation - excellect choice.

Just FYI, if you're looking for a good switch cheap. I just bought a Planex off of eBay. Planex is Japanese primarily. The model I bought 24 10/100 managed with dual gig-e module slots offers vlans, web and telnet interfaces, trunking and such. I paid a whopping $63 plus $20 shipping from California. Took me no time to figure out how to get in even though the manuals were in Japanese. All the menus are in english, and so is the web interface - which has some nice features. The only shortcoming that I would have liked to have is the ability to specify data rates other than 10/100 HD/FD. It may be in there somewhere I just haven't found it yet. It does do prioritization QoS - found that. Pretty nice for the price. And it is a 1U rack mountable unit.

Pretty good deal, but you can't go wrong with Cisco :)
I have my doubts/fears about using anything else actually... cisco has an amazing amount of documentation and their warranties are outstanding. Prices would be the only setback when choosing.

You can pick up a catalyst 2924 (24 port) XL EN switch for $500 if you watch ebay - then get 1000BaseT GBIC....

I actually had a 3548 go through my hands at $1300, but you'll have trouble finding them for anything under $1900... but their end of sale announcement may drop the prices in the upcoming months.

Yeah, I’m leaning towards Cisco myself. Specifically, the 3550 has rate limiting, dual gigabit uplink, and all that good junk. $4,995 for the 48 port model is a little daunting, but I guess that I didn’t really need a new server that bad.

Anyone know of a good way to query a Cisco switch for auditing and billing purposes?

MRTG

We have some 2948G Layer 3 switches...

Cisco rate-limit and traffic-shape commands are flaky at the best of times....i wouldnt rely on being able to offer somebody a 128k link or similar....the results are totally innacurate!

Cheers,

Go for the Extreme48 or the Foundry FastIron 24. Both are very nice and can be found for about $1,000.00 on ebay :)