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Best Layer 3 Switch for Home

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Part of the Furniture
For the guys who keep up, what is the best of the layer 3 switches out there for home use? It needs to be quiet not like any old Cisco 6600 or anything like that. I have been waiting for years for a good layer 3 switch. What capabilities make it the best?
 
a layer 3 switch is a router. switches that claim to be layer 3 are only partial in a sense that they do not use routes but forward packets by reading the ip header.

If you want a layer 3 switch than you're talking about something like a mikrotik CCR which routes at wirespeed that means that every device can get own private IP and it performs L3 routing/switching. when getting a switch whether or not it has fans depends on how big is it. If you need 24 or 48 ports it is most likely going to have fans.
 
A Layer 3 switch is not necessarily a router.

For that to be true, it needs to properly control (Firewall, NAT, etc.) and have WAN access too.
 
Yes I think a L3 switch should work at layer 3 instead of layer 2. Why don’t we come up with a list of what a switch should have for an advanced home use?

I will start a list you guys can add or subtract. Let’s discuss this.

I would like VLANs which can have separate IP networks assigned. There needs to be support for DHCP relay or IP helper addresses in the Cisco world so DHCP request can be forward to one DHCP server. Any ways at the least we need DHCP support of some kind so all networks have DHCP.

We need routing support for the networks on the switch. Routing protocols would be nice so you don’t have to static route your whole network but probably not necessary for home use.

Tag teaming of NICs or bonding of ports is probably not necessary for home use as networks are not big enough to require this. Gig ports have solved this for the home user. It of course would be nice. Also a 10G uplink port could be used for a server and again reduce the need for bonding ports.

ACL, access control list would need to be supported to control IP addresses and class of addresses.

I don’t think you would need NAT as it is more of a firewall feature than a routing feature. Having a firewall option would be nice but not neccessary for home use.

Of course we need the layer2 stuff.

What else am I missing? It needs to be quiet. Cisco gear is way too noisy. I would think 16 or 24 ports would be about right. I need rack mounted but probably not neccessary for home use.
 
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So something like a Cisco SMB 300 or HP 1920 series of switches.
As long as they are not POE and 28 ports or below, both are fanless.

If you want higher end L3 routing (RIP or OSPF) I seriously doubt anyone make a gigabit fanless model above 8 ports.
 
So something like a Cisco SMB 300 or HP 1920 series of switches.
As long as they are not POE and 28 ports or below, both are fanless.

If you want higher end L3 routing (RIP or OSPF) I seriously doubt anyone make a gigabit fanless model above 8 ports.

What is available in a 8 port model which supports routing like RIP, RIPII, or OSPF that is fanless? I could probably use a 8 port as a core and then expand out. Routing protocols sure make networks easy to manage.
 
What is available in a 8 port model which supports routing like RIP, RIPII, or OSPF that is fanless? I could probably use a 8 port as a core and then expand out. Routing protocols sure make networks easy to manage.
Off the top of my head?
Juniper 2200 compact line with the License upgrade (MUST BUY FOR OSPF, I made this mistake a while back)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005SFPCLO/?tag=snbforums-20
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/JUNIPER-ENH-FEATURE-LIC-F-EX2200-C/2591484.aspx

Cisco Catalyst Compact with IP Base software. OSPF is a feature on switches with IP Base or better. LAN base or LAN lite do not have it.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AOC1EFO/?tag=snbforums-20

An example of a small fanless switch that supports RIP is the HP 2915:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003OWZYLQ/?tag=snbforums-20
Edit: I actually used this one to link 5 networks together in different buildings using wireless links over POE. Everything was powered by the switch over POE. It worked far better than anyone expected.

I am sure there are a few more switches that support OSPF and are fanless (but not many) and quite a few more that support RIP and are fanless.

Edit2:
I know mikrotik's CRS supports RIP and OSPF, but I do not know if it is done at wire speed on the switching chip or if it shunts that work back to the much slower main processor.
 
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I am thinking we should add that all software updates are free since this is a home switch. As much as I like Cisco gear the Catalyst switch probably will not have free software updates. The HP switch states on your link it has free software updates.

Mikrotik switches look interesting and cheap. They have a CRS and CCR models. There does not seem to be much information on them. I wonder how the 2 models differ. They seem to not have spanning tree support but I could be careful and not create a routing loop.
 
I am thinking we should add that all software updates are free since this is a home switch. As much as I like Cisco gear the Catalyst switch probably will not have free software updates. The HP switch states on your link it has free software updates.

Mikrotik switches look interesting and cheap. They have a CRS and CCR models. There does not seem to be much information on them. I wonder how the 2 models differ. They seem to not have spanning tree support but I could be careful and not create a routing loop.

Looking through my vendor catalogs, I think there should also be a limit on price.
If one is willing to spend a few thousands of dollars on an industrial switch, you can get a unit that is modular, fanless, rack mounted, full layer 3 with OSPF routing.
 
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Yes, I agree we should limit price since this is for home use. I would think 600 or 700 should be tops but I would like to spend less.


I was reading up on the Cisco 300 switches and it seems like the most recent ones run real IOS. Is this true? Do you get free updates or have they fallen into the Catalyst arena and you pay yearly for the updates? I know the 300 series does not have protocol routing but it has a rich feature set of commands.
 
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Yes, I agree we should limit price since this is for home use. I would think 600 or 700 should be tops but I would like to spend less.


I was reading up on the Cisco 300 switches and it seems like the most recent ones run real IOS. Is this true? Do you get free updates or have they fallen into the Catalyst arena and you pay yearly for the updates? I know the 300 series does not have protocol routing but it has a rich feature set of commands.

The Cisco SMB line does not run IOS.
There are models that have a CLI and the ones on the switches are pretty close to real IOS but not quite.
The entire Cisco SMB line offers free updates but support is on a tiered structure split between free and payed.
The 500x line does offer RIP routing.

Okay so to recap:
Requirements:
Noise Level: very quiet low speed fans
Top price including any software: $800
Port speed: 10/100/1000 copper
Routing protocols: RIP
Support: Updates and basic warranty included in cost of the hardware

Nice to have:
Noise Level: Fanless
Form Factor: Rack mountable
Routing protocols: OSPF
Support: Lifetime warranty with advanced hardware replacement
 
I think we are getting close. I can’t think of anything else at the moment.

RIP routing would be fine for home use. RIP does broadcast a lot and would not work in a large network but for small networks it is acceptable.

PS
I like EIGRP routing protocol best because I used it for years when I worked. I think it is a Cisco only routing protocol. I wish it was widely supported.

PSS
I don' think a fan or not matters as much as just being quiet.
 
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I have been reading about Mikrotik. I kind of jumped from the CRS switches to the CCR1009 routers. Routers seem to be getting very fast with new CPUs. I guess a twist on a solution would be to use a core fast router to route your core network. Don’t use VLANs and just assign networks to the ports in the CCR1009 router and route all the traffic to your router firewall. I have lots of old switches around which could be used to expand out into to feed the core router. I am not sure the CCR1009 is ready for prime time right now. Maybe in a year or two. I can’t find anybody running a CCR1009 router to know how stable they are. I am old enough to remember the Cisco world before VLANS existed. Routers were used for the core back then.

I also read the review on this site about the Cisco 500 Series switches. I did not see any mention of using a routing protocol only static routing. I wonder if the 500 series will do RIP routing. They seem to have lots nice switch features. Since they don’t run IOS how stable are they?
 
I have been reading about Mikrotik. I kind of jumped from the CRS switches to the CCR1009 routers. Routers seem to be getting very fast with new CPUs. I guess a twist on a solution would be to use a core fast router to route your core network. Don’t use VLANs and just assign networks to the ports in the CCR1009 router and route all the traffic to your router firewall. I have lots of old switches around which could be used to expand out into to feed the core router. I am not sure the CCR1009 is ready for prime time right now. Maybe in a year or two. I can’t find anybody running a CCR1009 router to know how stable they are. I am old enough to remember the Cisco world before VLANS existed. Routers were used for the core back then.


LOL, oh I remember the dark days of thin and thick ethernet. Vampire (taps) and Firehose cables.
I think theres still a Kalpana switch somewhere in my garage. Along with some 10base5 3Com bridges and hubs. Don't miss them in the least.

If you want cheap fast router then there are at least three options I can see as perfectly viable;
Mikrotik CCR
Ubiquiti ER-Pro
Building your own out of x86 hardware.

I also read the review on this site about the Cisco 500 Series switches. I did not see any mention of using a routing protocol only static routing. I wonder if the 500 series will do RIP routing. They seem to have lots nice switch features. Since they don’t run IOS how stable are they?

Only the 500x does RIP routing. The regular 500 series switches don't. I personally can't vouch for them since I only used them once.

Edit:
Quote formatting
 
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Yes, I remmeber the old days and technologies and by the way you forgot token ring. I think I still have an old IBM 8 port MAU around here. I will sell cheap. LOL
 
Yes, I remmeber the old days and technologies and by the way you forgot token ring. I think I still have an old IBM 8 port MAU around here. I will sell cheap. LOL
. . . I have a client with an ancient chassis switch still in service. Three of the modules are 16mb token ring. one is a thin ethernet connector that is also connected to a 10base2>10baset media converter.
The server that is connected to all of this can never be shut down for fear of never powering up again. The tape drive that did backups is dead but we cant install a new one due to it being directly connected to an internal SCSI adapter. Every so often we do dumps over serial but the client's mentality is . . . it works, why should we replace it?
 
I have been reading about Mikrotik. I kind of jumped from the CRS switches to the CCR1009 routers. Routers seem to be getting very fast with new CPUs. I guess a twist on a solution would be to use a core fast router to route your core network. Don’t use VLANs and just assign networks to the ports in the CCR1009 router and route all the traffic to your router firewall. I have lots of old switches around which could be used to expand out into to feed the core router. I am not sure the CCR1009 is ready for prime time right now. Maybe in a year or two. I can’t find anybody running a CCR1009 router to know how stable they are. I am old enough to remember the Cisco world before VLANS existed. Routers were used for the core back then.

I also read the review on this site about the Cisco 500 Series switches. I did not see any mention of using a routing protocol only static routing. I wonder if the 500 series will do RIP routing. They seem to have lots nice switch features. Since they don’t run IOS how stable are they?
mikrotik CCRs are basically wirespeed routers that can route and do NAT at wirespeed. There are various CCR1009s but for optimum routing performance its best to get one without a switch chip. They can do bridging and routing with some firewall rules at wirespeed. They can also do NAT and firewall fast too but whether or not it is wirespeed depends on the model. They've released a new fanless CCR1009 model that looks interesting. For the CCR1009 the most stable ones are the newest fanless ones (hardware wise) but currently as long as you get a recent stable firmware (not release candidate) than it is stable and fast.

I dont think mikrotik does RIP and other such protocols in switch chip but i could be wrong because ive never used it. Everything switch related is in the switch section so if you wanted to bond ports using the switch chip you'd have to do it from the switch section since the interface section does it through CPU but does have more options. Im currently using a CCR1036 connected using 2 bonded SFP+ ports to a CRS226 which handles the switching and L2 part of my network while my CCR handles L2 to L7 firewall. The CCR's bridging can also use the IP firewall (L3 to L7) too.

The CCR1009 tends to be the least stable from the other CCR models reading around the forums (in terms of RMA) so go with the newer CCR1009s models if you intend to get them. It has been tested that the CCR1009 uses less CPU doing NAT when using ports that are directly connected to CPU.

The CRS is a fully managed switch but its a high learning curve with all those terminologies they use. Both suppport STP/RSTP but in the CRS switch section its called something else

If you decide to go with mikrotik they have their winbox GUI that can connect to their routerboards just by searching for their mac address and using it to connect. Its also good to learn their safe mode feature and dedicated a port to management if it doesnt have one. Safe mode is only available from winbox and rolls back any changes you made since you enabled it if it detects that you've lost connection.
 
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I was thinking about using this more as a core router than a switch as long as I can route at wire speeds. I would dump all my VLANs and just run separate networks. Assign IP networks to individual ports on the CCR1009 and have it route the networks setup on the ports. I would expand out the IP networks where each port would feed out to a switch or switches so all the networks are separate. I would need a routing protocol to handle all the networks as I don’t want to maintain static maps. Assigning a network protocol and letting the system carry all routing information is much easier than figuring out all the static routes when you are adding networks.

So I probably would not be interested in the CCR1009 without a routing protocol.

I really don’t want my core router or switch to be my firewall also. I like a division of duties and will maintain a separate firewall or router for my WAN interface.
 
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I was thinking about using this more as a core router than a switch as long as I can route at wire speeds. I would dump all my VLANs and just run separate networks. Assign IP networks to individual ports on the CCR1009 and have it route the networks setup on the ports. I would expand out the IP networks where each port would feed out to a switch or switches so all the networks are separate. I would need a routing protocol to handle all the networks as I don’t want to maintain static maps. Assigning a network protocol and letting the system carry all routing information is much easier than figuring out all the static routes when you are adding networks.

So I probably would not be interested in the CCR1009 without a routing protocol.

I really don’t want my core router or switch to be my firewall also. I like a division of duties and will maintain a separate firewall or router for my WAN interface.
Why not get a larger switch and bond the ports to the router? That way you don't have to deal with multiple switches yet still have the same speed?
 
Yes that would work. I really had not figured out whether they would be separate switches or not. You can run multiple networks on the same physical switch. DHCP is the only issue. It would probably be a hybrid of the 2 above. I have a wireless device which still needs a trunk vlan so their are still a few details to work out. I think if I get the core to work the rest will fall in place over time.
 
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