Gigglebit Switch

 

Currently in my home office I am using an Extreme Networks Summit X450a-24t Managed Ethernet Switch, which is this sexy purple thing:

 

It's fast, and it works, but it's loud, and I'm currently only using 5 ports on it. The number of ports is the only reason it's there; I was previously using 6 ports, which was too many for the 5 port DLink gigabit wifi router I previously had there (which has since been redeployed elsewhere).

I'm not using VLANs, or monitoring, or redundant power, or protocol inspection, or MAC filtering, or port aggregation, or the 10 Gigabit SFP uplinks, or anything that requires a 128 Gigabit backplane, or.. anything really.

The noise of the fans in it is the only issue I have with it, because it's annoying, and especially when I'm on work conference calls, since my work laptop is basically sitting on top of it.

While thrifting today, I came across a "Netis ST3108G Unmanaged 8 Port Gigabit Ethernet Desktop Switch", for the princely sum of $5.99 ($6.76 CAD, including GST, PST, HST, and whatever else taxes and bullshit).

Looks like I got a good deal:

 

It's nothing to write home about (just on the Internet):

 

Sorry, potato phone camera image..

It included the power supply, a basic 5V 2A jobby. Which apparently could suck:

Dude, just replace the power supply with another one. I wouldn't even bother trying to contact the technical support department of a company for a product about such a stupid problem, when I could just replace the power supply with one of the 132 other ones I have in a box. You all probably have at least 2 in your junk drawer/box. Anyway..

Apparently the switch has a 32Gbit backplane. Or 16. or 10. I guess it depends who you ask:

 

I think I'll be happy as long as it is at least 2, for the rare occasion more than one machine is trying to copy files at gigabit speeds.

One person had an issue with it:

Hmm, well, before we replace the existing switch, let's take a baseline of our current performance:

Not too shabby. Now, let's just relocate the uplink, and the testing client, to the new switch, and we'll downlink the new switch back to the old switch (just so my wifi doesn't drop out..).

Let's run iperf again to compare:

Well. I guess that's a win.

Those are not the same image.. the Cwnd column is different.

 

Certainly seems that I'm not going to lose any performance by retiring the Summit switch. I'll miss my login screen though :-)

I'll bet you can't guess the password.

Goodnight.

I can't say that I am a huge fan of the flashing orange lights, that's unusual from the green that I have seen on every other piece of equipment ever, but I am a fan of the no fan.

Silence is golden. And duct tape is silver.

Also, this is me rebooting my techblog, after 13 years..