new switch

[mosquito]

Is the Accton ES3024C 24 port switch a good choice, or do you guys recommend something else?

http://www.accton.com/accton/products/switches/es3024c/base.html

[mbossman2]

What is the application?

is this an addition to a network?

Are you hooking up workstations only?

Will servers be connected?

How much data is being moved around?

Is growth expected?

These questions will help is proper switch selection.

[mosquito]

Ok, here we go.

For the moment we have 4 16 port hubs stacked (all 10/100 switched hubs). On those hubs 8 servers are connected and the rest is filled with clients. We want to connect the servers and the other hubs directly to the switch. This way our network traffic should improve.

I don't know exactly how much traffic we have on the network. What are good tools to measure this?

We expect that 3 more servers will be added next year, and we will have about 10 new clients.

I hope this gives you more info.

thx

[Felix]

I understand "stacked" that way that your current 4 switches with 16 ports each is logically one single 64 port switch. This means you have actually a star topology, giving the shortest and fastest way for every connection.

If you add a 24 port switch you will get a tree topology. You have the servers and the sub switches hooked to the root switch. This means all and every traffic must pass through the root switch and even the sub switches. I think this setup would probably decrease your network speed instead of increasing it.

As I can see it the backbone interconnection used to stack the switches are the bottleneck in your setup. what speed is used to interconnect / stack the switches?

Another question: Are you sure the switches / the network traffic is the bottleneck? Are you sure the servers aren't running out of resources?

[mbossman2]

Actually mosquito i like your design. right now you have a flat network design. by layering your network (switch at the "core" and hubs at the edge you will minimize down time and give some performance increase.

Felix does have a point with your "backbone". you will want to maximize that speed to prevent bottlenecks (say 5 people making 100mbps calls to the same server trying to fit down a 100mbps pipe...the old 10 pounds of sh!t in a 5 pound bag).

[mosquito]

Is there no difference between a switched hub and a switch? Maybe I'm confused here, but I thought that a switch is better than a switched hub.

[mbossman2]

different manufacturers use the term switched hub for different things, but thru it all they are still hubs, with a shared bus, collision issues, and all the other performance issues with hubs.

let me preface this by saying that I work for Cisco: have you talked to a reseller that specializes in Cisco? We have a program in which Cisco will buy back older networking gear when being replaced with Cisco product.

Check the Cisco website fort he reseller nearest you.

http://www.cisco.com/public/crs/locator/

[mosquito]

Thx, I'm checking out the cisco resellers.

For now I will purchase a switch and connect the servers and hubs to this switch.

I also installed 2 NICs in our web and Database server. One of the Web servers NICs is going to the hub (later switch) and the other one is connected with a crossed cable to the Database server. (DB server uses the other NIC for other applications.) I figured that this way the load on the network will be decreased a lot. (this setup is not yet in production)