Subject: good, cheap switches?

[Donald B. Kinghorn]

... take this for what it's worth ... I've used dozens (hummm, probably  
hundreds) of inexpensive Netgear switches for smallish (<32 node) clusters. 
I've only had one with any problems [ a single bad port] I like the 500 
series like the 24 port 524 . These switches use a "cut through" design 
instead of the usual "store and forward". These are no frills unmanaged 
switches but seem to work just fine for the internal network of a cluster and 
you can get the 524 for around $300

For bigger switches I've used several HP M4000 and have only had minor 
problems with bad ports and finicky gigabit modules ... these things are 
around $1400 for 40 ports (managed)

Best of luck
-Don