[plug] [OT] Managed switch - Question

[Craig Foster]

There's usually some funky features as well.

A) The possibility of trunking. Connect two gigabit network card to two
gigabit sockets and bond/trunk/load balance your way to 2GB throughput.
Also copes best when a network card dies, as there's no downtime. Switch
to switch trunking is nice too :)

B) Most also come with SNMP. This allows the switch to talk to programs
such as mrtg for grpahing utilisation of said server trunk compared to
say the other uplinks to other switches, to see how your network
performs under load and who's hogging the bandwidth.

C) Network Awareness. Having software like HP TopTools tell me which
port has each IP address (eg Port A1+B1 = server trunk 10.1.0.10) or
what's connected (Port A2+A3 => HP4814["Accounts"], Port A4+A5 =>
FSM726S["Manufacturing"], etc)

D) Internal Error Logs. Eg "HP4814["Accounts"] received invalid Nway
state on trunk0 - Port A3" meaning the a previous network admin had set
one side of a trunk to half-duplex, and the other end to full duplex.
The two ends couldn't figure out how to communicate and keep the link,
and the HP logged every time there was an error.

E) Web based control of all of the above. Nothing like having to fix
someone's labeling mistakes by unplugging a network cable and seeing the
web page on the next machine update which socket just went off-line on
the switch in the cupboard.

This isn't a definite list, nor is it comprehensive. But you'll get what
you pay for... If you have multi-building premises managed switches mean
you can usually diagnose problems from the one spot. Good for schools
and other large area premises.

HP kit also has cisco innards for most of their modular gear. Look at it
as cheap Cisco gear:P

Regards,

Craig Foster
fostware at iinet.net.au (with SMIME) 
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