Switch advice please

If you have a dual port NAS, get one that supports LACP (802.3ad). I've got a netgear GS724 I bought on ebay which is managed and it works great. I think only newer revs are fanless so be careful which one you pick up if you care about the noise. I had a cisco small office switch that worked well but didn't support LACP. Basically LACP is hardware support for using both ports at once. I've got a PRO 6. You may want to make sure Netgear has the LACP option in your network config, that may be a feature of the business models. If you are linux savvy you could probably get it set up manually via SSH regardless.

steve

Hi,

Thanks. I have a Pro6 and LACP on the options, that's also why I was looking for a managed switch. Definitely care about the noise, thanks for mentioning, lots of used on ebay but with fans.

LACP won't help unless all your devices are connected to the same switch. Also, LACP will not improve performance at all unless you have multiple users accessing the NAS at the same time.

GS716T has 16 ports and no fan - its a scaled down GS724.

Hi Stephen,

Yes, I am aware of that, I read on one of your posts.
If none of the GS716T (any revision, including older models, I may get a used one) have fans, I'll get one! Thanks!

Just googled for the model which was fanless (gs724T-300) and stumbled on this bargain. Might want to check it out: http://www.ebay.com/itm/NetGear-ProSafe ... 3f340b2ce4

steve

Thanks Steve,

Unfortunately I live in the UK and they do not ship here. That said, i can find something here as well, just need to make sure it's the fanless model first!
Thanks for looking for me, appreciated!

Cisco definitely have bonding support, it's called Etherchannel (see http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/sw ... thchl.html) and can add up to 8 links. That said, I don't know if every switch/router they made has that or if this is just for pro devices with console access, I believe office switches are the cheapest one with web interface and stripped down OS.

I personally have a D-Link DGS-108 which works like a charm, it's as silent as it can get and has no problem giving me full gigabit speed. That's the important thing to check whether or not the switch can provide full speed (which requires (1Gbit/s up + 1Gbit/s down)*number of ports, so 16Gbit/s for a 8 ports switch). It's not manageable but I don't require it to be and unless you want VLAN I don't see why you would need it to be. My NAS has NIC bonding but :
1°) it isn't fast enough to get full Gbit speed
2°) I would have to get several gbit devices to get data from it at the same time
3°) I'm unsure if the switch needs to have a specific setup to make this work, I thought the OS had a trick for that.

After that you have to know which system you want to use, I was certified on Cisco devices, so I guess the simplest for me is to stick with Cisco rather than Netgear or Juniper. Although nowadays they have web interfaces for lower end devices.

Thanks xeltros.

The maximum managed speed is a good point. I did not know that.

The GS716T-200 has 32 Gbps, which is a good thing. I will definitely check this in the future, thanks!

Stephen,
while searching, I've come across the below:

It (v2 and 200) has many more features and is more up to date than the v1 model and the nicest feature for me is that this model has only one fan which is a lot more quiet than the two fans I heard on the v1 model. The v1 sounded like a hair dryer set on low speed, this model puts out a whisper and is no louder than a whirring fan of a quiet desktop PC.

It appears there is a fan then?

This says fanless: http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/ ... 8-5327.pdf

That would be for the 716T-200 and the 724T-300.

Ok, so I need to make sure it's a newer version. Thanks for your advice.

I'm beginning to consider an unmanaged switch to be honest! :)