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.
Off the top of my head?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.
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.
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.
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 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.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
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 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?
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?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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