[NTLUG:Discuss] Router or switch?

[Darin W. Smith]

I would expect to see more and more inexpensive N-way switches, since 
several chipmakers (like Broadcom) now have some very nice parts out.  I've 
worked with the Broadcom 8-port switch-on-a-chip devices and gotten them 
going under VxWorks.  Once you discover all the little gotchas in their 
documentation, they are easy to program for and work quite well.  There are 
also some competitors to Broadcom that have similar devices out, and it 
makes building a switch as simple as routing power to the chip, and the in 
& outs to the magnetics, which these days come packaged in the RJ45 jack 
with LED's.  This makes development costs for SOHO switches incredibly 
small.

Darin

On Tue, 06 May 2003 11:03:37 -0500, <severian at pobox.com> wrote:

> Howdy,
> I have a $20 Skylink and a $30 SMC switch.  They are both 8 port N-Way 
> switches and I have verified that they can route traffic simultaneously 
> on multiple pairs of ports without drpping the speed.  I had 6 machines 
> involved in each test, with 3 pairs of machines doing a gigabyte or more 
> ftp transfer at one time.  If I wanted to more fully test, I should have 
> done 4 pairs, but some of my machinnes have small hard drives and I 
> thought 3 pair was enough to prove the concept.  Some NICS seem to feed 
> the traffic better than others(my fastest are Intel), but I see up to 80 
> Mbits or so sustained traffic on multiples transmissions.  The total is 
> clearly more that 100 Mbit and I can say that they really are N-Way 
> switches, as advertised.  Now I don't say all cheap switches can do this. 
> I had a Linksys that failed miserably to keep up with the others and I 
> retired it.  But some cheap switches are great.  The only thing they 
> don't have is manageability which I can live without.  And I can't tell 
> you offhand if any of mine have the Auto-Mdix.  The only thing that can 
> affect is whether you need a crossover cable for the uplink.  Mine either 
> have that or an uplink port.
> Good day,
> Ralph
>
> In response to the welcome remarks of Darin W. Smith at 08:08 AM 5/6/03 - 
> 0500:
>
>> You are correct about this.  Cheapo switches won't support 100Mbit going 
>> on all ports simultaneously.
>
>
>
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-- 
D!
Darin W. Smith
AIM: JediGrover