Advice on a good LTSP switch

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Tue, 18 Mar 2008, Sameer Verma wrote:

> An unmanaged switch would be cheaper.

It probably would, but that might not be better.  A couple of things to
consider:

1. SNMP capabilities will allow you to monitor the bandwidth on each port
   individually (take a look at mrtg).  If one of your thin clients is
   sucking lots of bandwidth, you'll be able to see that.  If people report
   problems at certain times, you can look back at them.  You can spot if
   yout thin client server is satursating it's 1Gbit connection.
	http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/

2. VLANs can be very useful (do you have an office that would benefit from
   separation from the rest of the network?). You want proper 802.1Q
   standard VLANs that will span across multiple switches not the cheap
   stuff that doesn't.

Cheap switches can crash, drop packets when busy and other nasty behaviour
so the cheapest may not be the one you want.  If you can't afford managed,
fair enough, but if you can, you should at least consider whether you might
benefit from them.  Most complex networks buy them for a reason.

Gavin