good, cheap switches?

Andrew Leahy aleahy at knox.edu
Sat May 11 05:24:45 PDT 2002


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



More information about the Beowulf mailing list