96 port hub

[navychop]

My office is moving to a new building early May. I need to buy a cat 5e 96 port hub, replacing our current 24 port. I'm looking for a low end, rack mountable, basic model. Gigabit is a luxury we decided to forego. This switch will plug into a router with h/w firewall. No management features are needed.

Previous hub was from Dell, but they only seem to sell high dollar units now. Newegg does not seem to sell them this large. Dlink has 48 port, haven't seen a 96 from them. Amazon has one for $8,900 - let us just say, that ain't gonna happen. Googling it is in progress, but prices so far are high - and often for brands I've never heard of. Two 48s? Four 24s?

Any suggestions on where to look?

 

[navychop]

Netgear doesn't go that high either.

Anyone know anything about the Foundry Networks 9604 96-Port Switch? Not sure they're even available anymore.

How about the HP J8775B#ABA? Seems to be discontinued, not sure its really available either. HP ProCurve looks more complicated and expensive than we need.

Might have to redesign around 48 ports.

 

[Smith P.]

In my old time we used 3COM stackable hubs - add a cable and other hub on top.

 

[SatinKzo]

Why do you have to have all ports in 1 switch? Why not just 2 48 ports?

We used to use synaptics stuff at work back in the day, had 16 port blades that slid in, linking done on the backplane. Could hold like 10 blades IIRC. They were bulky, but nice and easy to work. I don't know if anything like that exists anymore and we junked all our stuff for cisco stuff when we upgraded.

 

[Pepper]

IMO, gigabit is no longer a luxury and you will be kicking yourself later if you shortchange yourself on this, especially if you have THAT many nodes on your network. Even if you don't have a lot of gigabit-capable computers on your network now, anything you get new is likely to include it. Any users you hook up with gigabit will be more happy with you, trust me on this.

24-port gigabit switches can be had pretty cheaply these days. Four of these will be noticeably cheaper than two 48-port or one 96-port if you can even find it. If you get managed switches, you can trunk multiple ports together for inter-switch connections of 2 or 4 gigabit. If you need EXACTLY 96 ports you will want probably five 24-port switches, because you'll have at least one (preferably 2 or 4) ports of each of the first four connected to the fifth.

 

[imthedevil]

I would opt for 4 24 ports units the plus side being that if one goes bad you aren't totally in the tank.

I recently had our 24 port gigabit switch from netgear replaced due to the cooling fan failing, it didn't fail but it wasn't sounding healthy at all. This will sound odd but it was the most enjoyable warranty process I have ever went through with ANYTHING. I didn't bother to register it when it was purchased 2 years and I didn't have the receipt but I called anyway 3 polite people and literally 5 minutes later a replacement was on its way. Now I did pay ~$15 for the advanced replacement (they will do it at no cost if you send yours in first) but it sure beat going out and spending $300 on a new unit, they also carry lifetime warranties.

 

[Pepper]

Some of the netgear routers I've used have had crappy firmware (eventually fixed several years later) but I believe all the purple (business class) stuff has a lifetime warranty now.

 

[StevenD]

If you are OK with an unmanaged switch, you cant go wrong with four Netgear ProSafe GS724Ts

 

[docpadds]

Refurbished HP Procurve 4000/8000 switches are rock solid.
A pair of refurb Cisco 2948 switches with a gig uplink between them would work.

The Dlink DGS-1248T is very similar to the model we use in remote offices ( the one we use is the PoE version as we have IP Phones). Its been a great little switch, $500 on Amazon for 48 Gig ports. Two of those and a crossover cable and your done. They are semi-managed with some basic setup and control/vlan etc through their web interface.

I have a Cisco 6509 with 144 Gig ports in the warehouse, but it weighs like 200 lbs LOL

 

[navychop]

Well, the gigabit ship has sailed. We chose to wire the new building as cat 5e - cat 6 just added too much to the costs. It was $10,000 just for all the low voltage wiring as it is (net, phone, coax). Well above budget. Another thou or two just wasn't in the cards.

We have exactly 96 drops defined and in place in the building today. And yesterday I was informed that there is a need for at least another 12 in the conference room, for computerized testing purposes. I think that's going to have to be served by another switch or two plugged into existing jacks. Slower, but the tests aren't graphics intensive.

Not all 96 ports will be active at all times, so we can be active with the patch panel, as today. The problem is, when things need to be moved, I'm the only one that knows how to move patch cords. Really. Everyone else refuses to learn, and I'm not always available.

And there are, of course, comments about adding more in what can only be termed "unusual" locations. And we haven't even begun to move in yet. And this is in a place where computer literacy, and utilization, is low. One sales critter doesn't even have a computer and refuses to use email. His wife set him up at home with an email account, and once each week he reliably logs in and deletes all his email. Unread. "If they don't have the time to call me on the phone, it isn't important."

The "dream" is to get more folks actively using the accounting program and network in general.

With an estimated 32 in full time use, the others can be patched. The 96 idea was in preparation for future growth. Excessive. We can go with 48 and buy a couple of years.

We have a Dell PowerConnect 2624 24 port unmanaged switch today. I'm going with the idea of 1 and maybe later 2 48 port switches, rather than 2, 3 or 4 24 port switches for simplicity and possibly space.

So now I'm asking for recommendations for a 48 port. And what does managed really buy me?

 

[mike123abc]

Cat 5e is fine for gigabit.

Our building has about 80 drops, we have 38 hooked up to a 48 port gigabit switch. When we were pulling wire, we pulled 5 cat5e and one RG6u to each plate. We use one cat5e for the phone. This gives us a lot of possible expansion in the future. We just hooked up 1 cat5e for the phone and 2 for ethernet. If an office needs more than the 2 ethernet we just jumper in more at the switch. We also did 2 plates per office on opposite sides of the room. The Cat5e wire was cheap compared to the effort to put it in. Pulling 5 wires and an RG6u at a time was easy.

We have 16 plates. Another guy and myself pulled it all one day, just used 5 boxes of ethernet and a giant spool of RG6. Used most of the 1000' boxes. Cost for the wire was about $500. Switch panel probably about $500 (rack, faceplates, snap in modules for ethernet/phone. Switch was about $500. Router ran $1200 (cisco 881w with SSLVPN).

For phone we deployed a talkswitch system. 4 real phone lines 8 VOIP lines with 12 analog extensions, 16 IP extentions. That ran about $2500 when you factor in the phones. Great system.

All in all we were wired up for under 5k.

 

[LER]

Look at the cisco stackable switches.
I don't think you'll get 96 ports in a single switch image any other way.

 

[docpadds]

Only 96 porters are generally blade based like the 6509 (cheap on the used market and has lots of features) or the HP Procurves. Thats the only way you can get a fast enough backplane to handle the load. We use 6509s and 3750s, just installed a 6509 today, all 150 lbs of it.

 

[John Kotches]

I have to agree with the others, you want to have multiple switches with that many ports.

We're installing Nexus 9000s and 7000s for our new data centers, that should rock

 

[navychop]

Looking seriously at the 3com 3CBLSG48 or POSSIBLY the NETGEAR GS748TS. The latter seems to have a slow interface and perhaps stacking problems.

Have pretty much decided against the NETGEAR GSM7248 and the NETGEAR GSM7248R. They would be overkill for our near term needs, and there is pressure to cut costs.

Any comments on which? We will remotely access the server more and more in the future, if it matters. I will likely buy today or tomorrow.

 

[vodad]

I just purchased a lot of computer items and in this group is the following items

Hp Procurve Hubs J3289A 24 port
I have 6 of these, I could let go for a reasonable price.

also 1 J3288A 12 port

and 3 3com Super Stack II 24 Port Switch Hub

I don't need all of these, I got them when I bought a Couple Cisco Routers and Switches that I needed.

Just a thought, I will be putting them on ebay in a few days.

 

[docpadds]

Infortunately, if my memory of HP model numbers serves me right, they really are hubs and not switches, which I certainly would not recommend using anymore.

 

[larryk]

There is no such thing as "overkill" in the IT industry...

 

[hendrix04]

Heh, i love how management ALWAYS wants to cut costs in the IT department. They usually find out they get a year down the road and need to update that 4 grand worth of equipment with 6 grand worth of equipment when they could have just spend the 6 grand to begin with... As Larryk said... There is no such thing as overkill in the IT industry.

 

[navychop]

Thanks for the offer on available equipment. However, as I was reeling from the need for another 12 (or "we'd really like 24") ports in the conference room, I was hit again. Now, there's only space for a single 1U. It's GOT to be a 48 now, and any future expansion is going to require a new rack or maybe I'll superglue the damn thing sideways on the current rack.

I'd say "Thank you sir, may I have another" - but I'm sure there's another coming anyway.