Giga Switch?
 

I'm looking to buy a gigabyte switch for my home. I'm all wired up for CAT6. Right now my switch has 24 ports but only 2 ports are 1000mbps the rest are 100.

Looking to upgrade to a switch that has more / all 1000 mbps capability. Can you point me to which forum / guide has some comparisons on a good switch?

Or anyone recommend a good one?

Depends on your definition of a "good switch"?

If you want good, then there is nothing better than a Cisco Catalyst 3750. but you can find a lot better value for money for a home network.

Do you need to be able to switch all 24 ports at wire speed?

Do you need layer-3 (routing) capability?

What about Power Over Ethernet?

Once you get down into the consumer bracket of LAN gear, its really driven by price so the enhanced feature disappear. Remember the master rule with network design ... Fast, Reliable, Cheap - choose any 2.

For a home network I would be looking at a Linksys switch. But I am sure you can find suitable products from Netgear and DLink as well.

If you want to go up a level, then look at the HP Procurve switches. They have a lifetime exchange warranty. They have some limitations compared to the Cisco 3750, such as no true priority queue (only round-robin queuing), but that is not going to be an issue for a home LAN. If I was running a small business on my LAN I would be going with the HP Procurve.

As for forums to discuss, I can't really help. You could try the Whirlpool forums, where they have one specifically for networking.

It's almost embarassing to admit; but I use a Trendnet switch....

http://www.buy.com/prod/trendnet-teg.../10362055.html

I got mine for $140, which is a steal for a 16 port managed Gigabit unit.

If you need 24 ports, google TEG-240WS, you'll find it for around $200.



It does everything you'd expect; Jumbo frames, QOS, VLAN etc...

It's been ROCK solid, hasn't given me a single issue in the 6 months since I turned it on. Decent (quiet) cooling in it, so it doesn't run too hot.

Cisco or HP hardware for at home is really overkill unless you plan to do something mission critical over your home PC's. In my case I stream loads of HD video over it, and make massive nightly backups to a server, all without any problems at all.

Somebody has to ask. :p

Why would one need 24 gigabit ports wired for home?

Nowadays it adds up REALLY fast. I've got 3 desktops, 2 laptops, A Windows Home Server, a Vista media center, a Wii,a printer, a slingbox, 1 Tivo, 4 security cameras, 2 voip adapters and some spare cables for visitors. I couldn't even fit it all on my 16 port, so 24 would have been just enough for me :D

I just got a Linksys SR2024, it is not managed but it does the job! 2 IP Printers, 2 DVR, 9 Computers, 1 Server, and all the gaming devices (but still haven't un-boxed them). I do have wireless set up in the house too but transferring large amounts of data is just faster on wired.

I've used a couple things over the past several years to impliment this, I didn't need more than 20 ports. First, I daisy chained a couple of these

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833122111

But, then moved up to one of these recently, when it was on sale for 119$. It happens every couple months or so.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833122146

All have worked excellent, I am getting a true 600-670mbs throughput around the ranch house.

Originally, I had a cisco that was about four years old, and I had a couple subnets setup so the slingboxs could carry their traffic uninhibited to their dedicate cable out. But that was overkill.

I find ebay has a LOT of nice units for great prices

I don't have gigabit stuff at home yet but I do need LOTS of ports. We've got 7 PCs, wireless access points, a router, and a bunch of VOIP phones. For much of that gigabit ethernet would be overkill.

Hm, your first link is for an 8-port gigabit switch, but the second link is a 100Mbit switch with 2 gigabit ports. Not quite the same. The 24-port unmanaged Netgear gigabit is the JGS524:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833122058

I was just searching for these recently so it's all familiar. That's a good price on the Netgear, really cheap if you figure in the rebate. For home use they're probably all about equivalent, even the Trendnet. ;) Personally, though, I don't care about gigabit at home because I'm always using wireless g. Maybe in another few years it'll actually make a difference for me, but my laptop is just slightly too old to have built-in wireless n.

I picked up a couple of Dell's web-managed switches a few months ago.

I probably grabbed the wrong link. the one I moved up to is certainly the 24 port GIGE

Absent the backups, I am still searching for a home (not home office, but home) application that requires gigabit ethernet.

Yeah, backups are the big resource hog here. But I also copy massive amounts of data (mainly ISO rips) between some machines and the extra speed really helps.

I stream a lot of video from a video_ts server to the LR and BR. These areas have CAT5 hookups. Means I don't have to transfer anything before watching.

But, it is just the FUTURE!! IF one is putting in switches, I would always spend a little extra to have 10x the capacity and bandwidth.

I think video is the big application - it actually makes gigabit more compelling for the home than for the office. I'd put the priority for implementing gigabit networking is:
1. data center
2. home video applications
3. office desktop
4. home office
5. home

I only get 150mbps on my GigE at home (no jumbo frames). That's a little less than 20MB/s. A DVD ISO is usually 8GB or 7 minutes to transfer. A 2 hr broadcast or cable HD movie is 17GB or 15 minutes to transfer to my laptop from my "archive" on my file server. You can double that for 100mbit ethernet.