Rob Golding

The new core switch that was due to arrive has finally come, with no real delays which is surprising, since it was sent using Royal Mail. The new Netgear has really good management features, and the web interface is pretty detailed. Most of all though, I’m enjoying the ability to have a few VLANs, and a reasonable amount of traffic without the thing crashing on me every five minutes (thanks Planet).

I’m going to be doing some bandwidth testing soon as well, just to see what kind of speeds I’m getting, but I’m expecting it to do fine.

For a while now, I’ve been having problems with the network’s core switch - it’s a Planet FGSW-2620. Yes, I know, it’s a Planet. My mistake in the first place, it wasn’t even worth the cheap price I paid for it. It crashes almost every day, when the traffic level gets above approximately zero. To put it lightly, it’s a nightmare. Even the management is terrible - it can only be managed by it’s serial interface, has no web server, not even an IP - so there’s no SNMP, no Telnet, nothing.

Anyway, lets get onto the new switch, that will be arriving any day now. It’s a Netgear FSM726, and it looks a damn sight better than this Planet I’ve been running for a few months. I know it’s no ProCurve, but it’s got all the functionality of a high level enterprise switch - all types of SNMP and RMON, a web interface, Telnet, VLANS, the works. As long as I can monitor it somewhat, and it doesn’t crash all the time, I’ll be happy. Plus it will make a nice addition to the new server closet I’ve just moved into.