Advice on a good LTSP switch

[Sameer Verma]

Joseph Hartman wrote:
> Hi all, I'm looking to purchase a switch for about 30 thin clients and 
> need some advice. I originally placed an order for this Netgear:
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122082
>
> but then I saw this 3com on sale:
> http://www.ictcompany.com/store/products.php?id=529&pt=1 
> <http://www.ictcompany.com/store/products.php?id=529&pt=1>
>
> Which one should I get? Or will either of these even be adequate? I'm 
> not looking to do any really demanding activities in this lab, mostly 
> they will be used for Internet research, to access Google 
> Docs/Spreadsheets/Presentations and various flash applications, but I 
> still want the machines to be quick and I'm prepared to spend a little 
> more if need be. Thanks -joe
>
I'm posting this information for archival purposes.

We changed switches in our LTSP lab from very noisy 3com Gigabit 
switches to Linksys SLM224G. These switches have 24 - 100 Megabit ports 
with two Gigabit ports. The lab is split into two sets of 16 thin 
clients. We use 100MB ports for thiun clients and Gigabit ports to talk 
to the servers directly. The server has two Gigabit cards setup as a 
bridge using bridge-utils 
(http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/securing-debian-howto/ap-bridge-fw.en.html).

The switches are holding up so far. The noise level is very low. These 
switches are very quiet!

Sameer

-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/