Network Hub selection help needed - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

22 Apr 2002

On Apr 22,  1:21, Chad Fernandez wrote:

...
  By commercial grade I just meant that I wanted to
avoid the home grade
 stuff that may not have features, or only a few connections.  The type
 of thing that Best Buy, Staples, or another cunsumer oriented store may
 carry for your average Windows user. 
Ah, well there aren't all that many features to distinguish a dumb hub (or
switch) from another dumb hub (or switch).  Number of ports, whether it
supports autosensing 10/100, internal or external PSU, noise level (ones
with internal PSUs often have a fan), colour of the box, and that's about
it.  Some low-end devices are more reliable than others, of course.

...
  > If you see a decent modern 3Com hub or switch,
that's fine but most of the
...
  > second-hand stuff I've seen is 10baseT only. 
I wouldn't bother looking for
...
  > IBM.  Baystack, 3Com, HP, Cisco are the ones
you're likely to see.  And
 > Netgear, which is almost entirely unmanaged kit, but quite good quality.
...

 What's the difference between managed and unmanaged? 
Unmanaged means a dumb device that has no configuration settings, provides
no stats, and has no address of its own.  A managed hub or switch will have
it's own IP (and/or IPX address, rarely DECnet or Appletalk) and will
usually support SNMP (the Simple Network Management Protocol) and/or some
kind of web interface.  That will allow remote configuration of things like
IP address, spanning tree settings (if it's a switch), port settings
(enabled or not, half/full/auto/duplex, 10/100/auto, etc), VLANs (if it's a
modern switch), and monitoring and interrogation of internal data
(byte/packet/collision/error counts on ports, port state, MAC address(es)
last seen on each port).  The management costs a lot extra.

-- 
Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Network Manager
						University of York