48 Port Switch Recommendations?

[Cipher]

I've been running a simple unmanaged 24 port switch in my home network for a while now, but given all the ports are used, and I have more to add, I'm now looking at upgrading to 48 ports. Here are some of the features I'm aiming for:

1) 48 x 1 Gigabit ports (either 1 x 48 port switch or 2 x 24 ports switches)
2) Quiet (ie fanless or almost silent fans)
3) Stable uptime & performance
4) Decent total bandwidth
5) Non-POE
6) Lower runtime power usage
7) Inexpensive

Looking quickly on Amazon, I came across the following options:

• TP-Link TL-SG1048 - $210
• NETGEAR GS348 - $270
• Ubiquiti USW-48 - $440

I also saw a fanless 24-port Cisco's (C1000-24T-4G-L) meant for small businesses, and I like the look of their web UI, but getting two of these would be more than I want to spend for switch hardware in my home network.

I know very little about the differences between consumer/prosumer/enterprise switches so I'm hoping for some recommendations that will help me find a replacement for my current switch.

 

[Sean Ho]

Fan swap Juniper EX2200, 3200, C3750G, HP 2510-48G, etc

 

[athurdent]

This one's fanless: Switch 48 - Ubiquiti Store
Management with Ubiquiti is always through their Network (controller) software, so you have to install that somewhere, or get one of their consoles. Careful, that stuff is addictive.

 

[Cipher]

Fan swap Juniper EX2200, 3200, C3750G, HP 2510-48G, etc

Sean, are these all pretty equivalent or would you recommend one over the others? Also, some of these seem a bit older, I'm assuming I wouldn't be missing much compared to newer switches outside of maybe slightly faster CPU, updated security patches, better management UI?

 

[Cipher]

This one's fanless: Switch 48 - Ubiquiti Store
Management with Ubiquiti is always through their Network (controller) software, so you have to install that somewhere, or get one of their consoles. Careful, that stuff is addictive.
View attachment 30690

Yea, that was one of the ones I came across and added in my list as quiet is a big requirement for all my equipment. You have any experience with this one?

 

[Sean Ho]

Sean, are these all pretty equivalent or would you recommend one over the others? Also, some of these seem a bit older, I'm assuming I wouldn't be missing much compared to newer switches outside of maybe slightly faster CPU, updated security patches, better management UI?

It was intended as a starting point for searching; there are tons of switches of similar vintage with 48x gigabit ports, with or without PoE, some with a few SFP+ for stacking/uplink (e.g., Aruba S2500 family or Dell N2048). If you're only using it in L2 mode, CPU and firmware updates are largely irrelevant. You might hunt for photos/YouTube of the innards to assess the difficulty of swapping fans for quieter ones, usually 40x20mm. The thread on the S2500 includes discussion of fan modding (very doable).

 

[athurdent]

Yea, that was one of the ones I came across and added in my list as quiet is a big requirement for all my equipment. You have any experience with this one?

Sorry, no experience with that particular one, but I have quite a few Ubiquiti switches. If there's anything specific I can help with, just let me know.
In general, their switches work best coupled with their APs and gateways/consoles, UniFi is a package. What I really like with UI switches, you can manage all of them with their GUI. So, creating a new VLAN across multiple switches, a few clicks and it's distributed everywhere. With my old Cisco SMB switches coupled with a few Netgear ones, a new VLAN always involved me configuring every switch.
Nowadays, I'd always get a PoE switch though, but that's just me I guess.

 

[oneplane]

Like the mentioned EX2200, 3200, C3750G, HP 2510-48G and even the USW, most switches in those ranges tend to be similar because the manufactures mentioned on the front/box/sticker aren't actually making much of the switching stuff; that's all Broadcom, Marvell and Nvidia etc.

The brand names buy the chip, software and the hardware design, and compose the available features into something they can market, perhaps with some extra software branding and specialisation like chassis form factor, temperature range, power supply and licensing scheme.

As for fanless/noise/moving parts: most switch designs will use either a single ASIC or two of them (which often creates some bottleneck), and those will create enough heat to require active cooling when they are capable enough of moving data around for all those 48 ports. If some more limited (and newer) ASICs are used, you might find highly optimised ones that trade newer manufacturing processes and less features for a lower temperature and lower energy consumption.

A used 'enterprise' switch and a fan replacement goes a long way, it gets you a very capable switch for a very low price, and they will usually run for decades with no problems. Beware of switches that are exclusively 'web managed' or 'smart managed'. Not because those management methods are universally bad forever, but because it means the software stack is separate from the normal switch SDK which in turn means far less re-use of mainstream developed software and much less mainstream knowledge will be available resulting in (often) lower software quality and all the bugs that come with that.

 

[NablaSquaredG]

Brocade ICX6450-48 with fan mod, ICX7150-48 is fanless (but sadly quite expensive)