Geeks in Paradise | Brian Chee | InfoWorld | Inexpensive manageable desk switch | January 18, 2007 11:05 AM

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Inexpensive manageable desk switch

January 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Inexpensive manageable desk switch

Just when I was ready to give up hope of finding a small manageable gig desk switch, I got a sample unit sent to me by my university HP rep.

HP ProCurve 1800-8G:
8 ports of 10/100/1000 copper auto mdi/mdi-x switching
12volt wall wart power supply
Environmentals: 23F to 104F and 15-95% humidity non-condensing
Froogle price range: $172 to $200 MSRP: $209

So while this is a managed switch, there isn't the normal serial console port on it. In this case you're expected to set your IP address within the 192.168.2.0/24 subnet and browse to 192.168.2.10 to get into the ProCurve web management interface.

So while you shouldn't expect alot of advanced features, it at least does 802.1p vlan tagging so that you can feed a trunk line to the cubical and then break out your VOIP vlan from your data vlan and so forth. Considering that HP's new line of switches all have POE on them, it sure would have been nice if this sucker could have been powered by POE...

Here's some specs off the HP Site:
Layer 2 switching

VLAN support and tagging: support up to 64 port-based VLANs and dynamic configuration of IEEE 802.1Q VLAN tagging, providing security between workgroups
Resiliency and high availability

802.3ad Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP): provides link-level redundancy with support for up to 4 trunks on the ProCurve Switch 1800-8G and 12 trunks on the ProCurve Switch 1800-24G, each with up to 8 links (ports) per trunk
Quality of Service (QoS)

IEEE 802.1p prioritization: delivers data to devices based on the priority and type of traffic
Broadcast control: allows limitation of broadcast traffic rate to cut down on unwanted broadcast traffic on the network
Connectivity

Jumbo packet support: supports up to 9,216 byte frame size to improve performance of large data transfers
Monitor and diagnostics

Port mirroring: enables traffic on a port to be simultaneously sent to a network analyzer for monitoring

All in all I would have to agree with HP that this is a great way to transition away from dumb switches, and get you the ability to manage all the way into the cubical. Combine that with HP's ProCurve manager and you're got a winning combination.

Posted by Brian Chee on January 18, 2007 11:05 AM

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