Sounds like a pitch Larry Ellison could have delivered.
Gee, should I have spent $200 six years ago on two 48 port PoE switches with old firmware, or $2500 on an equivalent "new" one? Tough call... especially since the new ones are STILL about a thousand dollarydoos (e.g. 48 port poe+ - Shopping and Price Comparison Australia - Buy Cheap).
Absolutely not. Like others I initially started with the 6xxx series years ago thanks to this thread and I have since switched to the 7xxx series switches. The 6xxx series switches are old enough that I wouldn't recommend them anymore, but the prices on the 7xxx series switches have dropped down to similar prices as the 6xxx series when it was started.
Exactly. I bought a few ICX 6450-24 switches, probably ~4-5 years ago for less than $50/ea shipped. Yes, these use a bit more power than newer variants (~23w vs ~15w for the newer ones), but the higher price of newer hardware negates any cost savings from an energy perspective.
No clue, maybe because it always says FAN1, FAN2, .... on the PCB?I'm not sure why you are uppercasing FAN, the word 'fan' is just fine in lowercase
Before:
No regrets at all! I am thinking about buying a second one just to have replacement unit if the main one dies. As of bugs, I would assume all of the major ones are already resolved. And if there are any still open, these would be the very specific related to niche functions which I will most-likely never face.
I am not aware about any 8x10G + 48x1G port switch with such PoE budget and price tag close to what Brocade/ICX is sold on Ebay for... Hell I can't think about anything else with 24x1G + 4x10G with 300W PoE budget, what would be the minimum for me.
They seem to test perfectly fine in STH's testing so you'll have to provide a source for that performance statement. Realtek switch chips are also used in lots of other name brand switches without issues.I am not counting the <insert_random_name> switches from AliExpress These might have the ports on paper, but the moment you use more than few (one?) 10G ports, the performance goes to hell or they start melting. Not even mentioning the security - If you're lucky, there is none (security), if you're very lucky, there is a rootkit preinstalled for free
. Also, the webmanagement of the small(er) models is quite limited while the console is usually nonexistent (as far i recall from the reviews).If you check anything somewhat recent that has been tested with their new test equipment, you'll see that they have no problems doing line-rate at all ports at the same time. That's true for both the more well-known brands as well as the OEM designs sold on AliExpress as well as on AliExpress under different brands.@blunden I don't know man, but checking this article (yes, it is 4 years old but still), i see only one 24port with PoE and its Ebay price is way above the Brocade, even these days. Then checking some more recent articles i se this which has only 2x10GB ports and its unmanaged. Then next ~5 pages of the networking articles are only 8-12port models. Then, on page 8, there is Dell N2224X-ON, but this is DELL, not some "Cheap AliE model". Also i found this, which is close to the Brocade, but the mentioned $400 still almost 2x price compared to ICX 7250-48P (at least for me / offers in nearby countries), add the shipping from Taobao and it goes over 2x.
The "cheap" models (even the 4/8/12 port ones) tested by STH might keep up with one or two 10G, but use more of them and they either start overheating or the speed goes down significantly. I don't know in which videoreview Patrick mentioned this but I recall that from ~2-3 years ago when I was looking for something 10G/SFP capable. After some hours/days of research I found myself ordering the Brocade from Ebay, mainly because of this thread
Oh and about Mikrotik, well, I used to use their Routerboards/RouterOS some years ago. I have nothing against that brand, but i never managed to fully "operate" the Winbox management, and theyr're not not the cheap side either.
As of the malicious thing. I said that if you're lucky, there is none and it works just "fine". but I would not expect much security/feature updates. On the other hand there were Chinesse brands with proven malicious content/backdoor (Zbtlink, Tenda, Ruijie, or even TP-Link, even though this was 3rd party foul-play). But yes, point taken regarding the OpenWrt approach, very true. (I used to have DDWRT on ooooold ASUS WL-500g huh)
I am not claiming that Brocade is the only one (there are also old Arubas or Omada devces which can do heavy lifting too). I bet there are other brands people are satisfied with. My point was, that Brocade is(was) true enterprise device, with well documented capabilities and robust build quality. The free "honor-based" license is just cherry on top. If the noise/size/power consumption is not an issue and you got it for cheap, there is no reason to go back to SOHO device...
If you only need 24+ ports of 1 Gbit/s ports and 4+ SFP+ ports, the RTL9311 might be an option. It supposedly supports 48 ports of 1 Gbit/s and 6 SFP+ ports. I don't have any particular switch model to point you to though.
Yes, if your goal is a simple L2 switch with PoE support, the out-of-the-box (factory default) configuration will be sufficient. I don't know if the 6xxx series has a 'web GUI', but if it does it will be very basic.
If you buy a used one, it will have who-knows-what config on it. You will need to reset it to factory defaults. You might as well bump it to the latest firmware while you're at it.
back in my day those were like 9000 dollars and you were happy about it