Which switch?

[bebox]

Hi All,
We have bought a new warehouse and now need a new switch. We have been qouted $11k Aussie dollars for a Cisco 3548XL 48-port but I see that there are other switches around the $3k or $4k mark eg Netgear. We need something reliable and of course very good but I just can't think how it can be worth the extra $7k!? Any help would be much appreciated...

Thanks

 

[IPKONFIG]

Are you shopping at a Cisco Gold partner? If so, you should be able to pick up a 3524 for 2.5k a switch. So you can get (2) for 5k. At least that's what I'm paying for them.

 

[BuckWeet]

Depends on what you need to do, The cisco is definately a better switch than those cheap crap ones you can buy at compusa and such.

they can do alot more than those, but if you just need basic connectivity, i guess the netgear would work..


BuckWeet

 

[bebox]

Thanks guys...but I suppose my main question is in Aussie dollars there is a NETGEAR for say 4k and a Cisco for $11k (three times the price)..I just need to know how it can possibly be that much better. If it is then I will buy one but if not then we can spend the money elsewhere.

We wouldn't really have high traffic needs, we warehouse Cd's and DVD's for about 500 account in Australia. We use a custom built in house program on a SQL server and also run Office and email/internet via ADSL. So not really that high end in terms of our needs I wouldn't think.

Any help is very much appreciated...

 

[BuckWeet]

You only really need Cisco Level of switches, when you're doing multiple VLANs, GIG uplinks, redundant configurations, etc.. things of high end nature like that..

The Cisco is manageable, whereas the netgear isn't..

BuckWeet

 

[bebox]

Ahh okay..so if all we are doing is runnign a W2K box with Terminal services for 30 workstations and running an inhouse program and a few other basic operations then the Cisco is well and truly overkill? The resller sales guys are telling me that the the technology in the NetGear is a few years behind Cisco and will therefore not be as efficient. But it sounds like we will just be paying for somethign we won't be using?

 

[MJewell]

Well, thats another issue, The main diff is going to be the bandwidth the switch can handle, the average sheep switch has a 3.2g backplane (conn between ports and cpu), where the 3548XL is:
10 Gbps switching fabric and up to 6.5 million packets-per-second forwarding rate

I can't tell you which one is right for you, but I can tell you if you want a workhorse switch, spend the money and buy a good one, We had about 20 Linksys 24port 10/100 switches in our old building, and after a while they just fried and had to be replaced, we replaced 8 of them in 2.5yrs...
Not knocking the Linksys switches either, they worked great, a little slow since they were only 3g backplaces, but they were cheap and served their purpose untill we moved to our new building...

Mike