Experience with SMC 8624T L2 switches and nics

[Bob Drzyzgula]

On Mon, Feb 24, 2003 at 02:11:03PM -0500, Marc Cozzi wrote:
> 
> Has anyone used the new SMC Tiger Gigabit switch for
> clustering? Think it?s a model 8624T.
> This is a non-blocking 24 port managed layer 2 switch that
> supports trunking and jumbo frames. Are there any problem
> with SMC 1Gb nicks like the 9552TX? It seems like a very
> good deal at the prices listed.

We have three of them, but have only begun to
work with them; we're working on the next
generation of our cluster using Intel SE750xWV2
boards in the Intel SR1300 chassis. These
boards have dual Intel gigabit interfaces
onboard, and we've done some rudamentary testing
using those to blast traffic over the SMC
switches. I asked the guys who are doing the
grunt work of putting this all together, this
was the response:

* i wish i had more specific information, but
* we're just not doing anything all that sexy as of
* yet. basically, we've set up VLANs, jumbo frames,
* and i've testing trunking. it all seems to work
* as advertised. N.B. the last four 10/100/100
* ports share a controller with the mini-GBIC
* ports, so if you plan on using any or all of
* the GBICs, you'll only get 20 copper ports.
* not an issue with us, but worth mentioning.
* 
* i suspect we really won't know if these devices
* are ``too good to be true'' until we start
* passing frames at a much higher rate, but so far,
* so good. [...]
* 
* also, the vendor where we got these switches gave
* us a bunch of the 9552-TX cards with it. although
* since our beowulf machine comes with 10/100/1000
* ports, we've yet to do anything but peripherally
* test these cards.

BTW, as I reported previously [1], these switches
use Broadcom chips. FWIW.

--Bob Drzyzgula

[1] http://www.beowulf.org/pipermail/beowulf/2002-December/005517.html