I'm looking at possibly replacing all my network switches at work with something else.

Currently we have a real mixed bag of different Netgear models (mostly FSM and GSM series L3 managed and unmanaged switches), plus a single solitary Cisco. The network currently has lots of switches for specific purposes (core video, edit suites, control system, general office etc.). The general office switches are the biggest (4 x FSM7328S in a stack configuration) all the other switches uplink into that along with the WAN router. Not pretty, but it works.

What I'm looking to do is unify all my switches to a single model (or possibly two so I don't waste gigabit ports on 100Mbit computers), stack them all together and use VLAN's to segregate the network.

I've always been a little wary of the Netgears, I've never been convinced that they perform at full speed.

If you guys were going to do this, what switches would you use?

How much money do you have?

Foundry Networks, Juniper Networks, and Extreme Networks make good stuff.

Cisco products are good for simple switching and routing. Definitely don't get any advanced featureset devices (firewalls, etc.) from them though.

HP makes decent stuff, but their usability is poor, IME. They do have better firewalls than Cisco, though, IMO.

For basic switching and routing, those paragraphs work downward by preference, and probably price, too.

Also, no one ever got fired for buying Cisco products.

Oh, I'd probably also look at a chassis-based solution so that you can have multiple distinct interface types all attached to one backplane.

Cisco 3750-E switches will do what you want but they'll be expensive compared to the Netgears. The regular 3750 would probably do as well but you might be limited in the future if you decide to expand. You'd probably be able to get by with the IP Base feature set.

I've got a GSM7324 switch at home and yeah, Netgear doesn't inspire a huge amount of confidence in me. The firmware in them is a bit weird and very IOSy but not quite in terms of the CLI. Oddly enough, the 48 port versions for some reason run different firmware than the others.

The rest of my network at home is all Cisco but I needed a cheap GigE switch at the time and Netgear was all I could get.

I won't have a tonne of cash to spend on the project. I was thinking probably £3k a switch.

Our colleagues in the newspapers use HP Procurves in pretty much the same configuration that I'm after. Sadly we're the poor cousin when it comes to getting money spent on us. I'd be inclined to use same ones, but they have had their fair share of issues with them.

EDIT: The only other thing I should really consider is PoE.

How about a per-port price? That would be more helpful.

hmmm, that'll take some thinking....

The regular 3750's come in under £3000 for most configurations.

Well, did you expect that the switches would be 48-port switches? 24-port?

What I'm getting at is that you can get 4-port switches or you can get 48-port switches. You can probably get a really expensive 4-port switch for the same price as a really cheap 48-port switch. (Okay, I exaggerate.) So price-per-switch is not terribly meaningful.

I've had excellent results using the Dell switches. 2724's mostly. A couple 5324 switches thrown in as well. Easy to configure and manage, very inexpensive for the feature set and rock-solid. Basically, I've been more happy with them than with my cisco's. We use Nortel for our VoIP system, and we tried Dell PoE switches to see how well they worked. We will not be buying more Nortel's. The Dells are less than half the price, work with less hassle, and have been more stable.

I think some of the Dell switches are actually HP ProCurves in disguise.

General office ports: 96 (100 Mbit possibly PoE)
Core video ports: 24 (Gigabit)
Control system ports: 12 (100 Mbit / Gigabit)
Edit system ports: 24 (Gigabit)
Filer ports: 24 (Gigabit)

So probably 180 ports in total. I was thinking approx. £12k for the project probably £60 a port. The thing I like about the way it works over in the papers is that all the ports are effectively the same. They're all either gigabit, 100Mb or 10Mb and they can have PoE on any port. Then they just select the appropriate settings and enable the right VLAN's to make a specific type of port.

While i'd like every port to be gigabit, I realise the cost would be massive. Also, the majority of users wouldn't benefit from the increased speed given our WAN connection is currently only 10Mbit.

You can get every port gigabit for pretty cheap these days.

At the least get some 24 or 48 port 100Mbit + 2 port 1Gbit so you can uplink them with some reasonable speed. Essentially daisy chain them.

I'd be surprised these days if you couldn't get all Gb on a £3k 48 port switch. Probably not PoE as well though. Something like the HP 2800 or 2810 series. 2900 if you want a faster uplink speed (i.e. 10GBASE-<something>). A 2810-48G is only A$3.3k here or about 1500 pounds. A 2900-48G is only A$5.5k or about 2500 pounds. These are fully managed, VLAN, stacking etc.

I've always had pretty good experiences with HP. And good support too.

Edit: PoE starts getting a bit tricky though with Gbit. In HP they seem to want you to do it as modules.

I agree. The HP Procurve that I've used had great features, including some pretty good features for VLANs and 802.1x authentication, but its user interfaces for managing those things was just awful.

I can get an HP 5412 chassis with eight 24-port GigE PoE modules (192 ports) direct from HP for $22,673.52. That's just barely over £60 a port, and it leaves you four slots in the chassis for expansion.

Or the 4208 with 96 100bT and 96 GigE (no PoE) for $17,479.19 (about £50 a port). No in-chassis expandability, though.

On the other hand, you could go with stackables and get two 2510G-48 48-port GigE switches and four 2610-24 24-port 100bT switches for $6,035.96 (£35 a port). Again, no PoE. Plus you have to contend with probably trunked GigE ports for interconnects, which is certainly not as effective as a backplane. Cheaper, though.

I quote HP numbers because they have prices easily available online. But that should give you ballpark information.

It's only the office stuff that needs PoE (assuming we end up with the same phones as the papers) and that's going to be pegged at 100Mb anyway. Anyone wanting/needing GigE would probably have to forgo PoE and power a phone from a wall wart.

I'm liking the idea of the chassis based approach. The only issue I have is that the office stuff is on two different floors, so I'd probably have to have two chassis and link them with 10GigE trunked interconnects.