Cisco switchs are used for production environments.
Dell seem to be designed for home and small office environments.
If you are looking for a switch for a colo application, especially if you are concerned about latency and packet loss, would strongly suggest Cisco
But they are expensiver. If the guy is looking for a cheaper manageable switch, he can buy Dlink or HP Procurve. Both of them are very good at an affordable price.
We use some HP Procurve 2524 switches (some with the gigE module) and we are very pleased with them as well.
CI Host, one of the datacenters we use - gave us 2 Dell 3024 switches... they were dead on arrival. We tried to reset them - but still no dice - on both.
2 different units - even CI Host could not get them running - I would say --- RUN AWAY from the dell switches.
We have used both DLINK, and Netgear as well as Cisco --- Netgear are pretty nice - Cisco as well --- Dlink - ok
I like the Netgear for ease of use however....
Extreme networks - these guys are a great up and coming company ---> their fixed configuration switches are pretty inexpensive - and are pretty decent.
One of our more recent finds - is a small company out of Florida called Hotbrick.
Their switches and firewalls are very decent - come with a small linux OS in some of their products. some of our remote users/offices use the LB2 units - which provide fail over ... not a bad product for the price... Beats out Sonicwall and such...
NEVER BUY DELL SWITCHES !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They just do NOT work.
We have had a customer with Dell PowerConnect switch. He was my nightmare. If power goes down for a reason, the switch forgets some of its settings (???!!!!), sudenlly without any reasons it stops working and has to rebooted. Stay away from it, for God sake!
This can also happen with just about anything. Computers, switches, TV, VCR... etc. I don't think that is a reason to say Dell PowerConnect switches are bad.
Cisco or HP. Dells if I'm not mistaken are a bastardized 3Com.. And have some real issues..
I was thinking about testing some Layer 3 3Com switches in our network environment. Could someone tell me any issues they have had with them? What issues did you have?
Having used both Cisco and Dell in a DC environment I am in a position to comment on them both.
We used all Cisco at an ISP I worked for in the late 90's through to about 3 years ago.
Pros:
Hard to beat in performance - The backplane and over all throughput of the switch backplane, even the basic 2924 has a backplane of 11mpps (for the EN-XL, if memory serves me correctly).
Vibrant third party market both in support as well as sales of actual units. Ebay always has a great selection of used units.
Cisco documentation is unrivaled (TAC)
Cons:
Price (although most would argue that you get what you pay for)
Lack of support for older (but still prevalent) units. Read: Cat 2924-EN-XL. There are some known exploits for the last IOS available that will run on 2924 that makes us shy away from those units.
I have used Dell PowerConnect 33XX series in a data center environment for the past year. (They were initially purchased based on price and options - 802.1q primarily)
Pros:
Price -- They are REALLY cheap on ebay
Good feature sets -- supports 802.1q, GVRP, etc.
Cons:
CLI is just enough "IOS-like" to cause you problems if you are really use to IOS
Tough to configure with the web interface
Limited backplane (8mpps for the 33XX series)
Documentation is at best awful
Having said that we are now in the process of migrating away from the PowerConnects to a Cisco based network infrastructure with a 3550 at the core and 2950's at the racks.
In the end it really comes down to your budget, and your familiarity with each. If you are watching your budget, then Dell might be a viable option. For a large scale high bandwidth application, you will quickly outgrow the Dells.
Hope that gives you some basic insight.
Last edited by expresscolo; 10-27-2006 at 08:58 PM.
