good, cheap switches?

[Maurice Hilarius]

With regards to your message at 10:01 AM 5/11/02, 
beowulf-request at beowulf.org. Where you stated:
>From: Andrew Leahy <aleahy at knox.edu>
>To: beowulf at beowulf.org
>Subject: good, cheap switches?
>
>
>Hello,
>
>Recently, I've locked horns with the computer support people about what sort
>of a switch I should use in my 20-node beowulf cluster.  I'm looking for a
>24-port 100Mbit switch, and they're pushing a Cisco 3350-24 switch (around
>$1900) apparently for the simple reason that that's the switch they use on
>the rest of the campus.  As I look at the product specification sheet, their
>switch is loaded with features a campus-wide network manager is bound to
>love, but would be useless on an isolated beowulf cluster.  Since cost is an
>issue here, I'm curious if anybody has any recommendations for a cheaper
>(unmanaged?) switch with a switching fabric of comparable quality.
>
>Thanks for your assistance.
>
>Andrew Leahy
>aleahy at knox.edu

The other criteria I consider important is good bandwidth when all ports 
are used, and the inclusion of a gig port or a GBIC slot, to allow a high 
bandwidth connection to the master node.
In this respect I think the Extreme Networks Summit24e-baseT is a very good 
bet.
It  has 24 of 10/100 ports and 2 gig copper ports.
Edu/government cost is around $1,750



With our best regards,

Maurice W. Hilarius       Telephone: 01-780-456-9771
Hard Data Ltd.               FAX:       01-780-456-9772
11060 - 166 Avenue        mailto:maurice at harddata.com
Edmonton, AB, Canada      http://www.harddata.com/
    T5X 1Y3

Ask me about the UP1500 Alpha - Full systems from $3,500!