From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Dec 18 22:17:17 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from ind.alcatel.com (postal.xylan.com [208.8.0.248]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A106B151EA for ; Sat, 18 Dec 1999 22:17:14 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from wes@softweyr.com) Received: from mailhub.xylan.com (mailhub [198.206.181.70]) by ind.alcatel.com (8.9.3+Sun/8.9.1 (ind.alcatel.com 3.0 [OUT])) with SMTP id WAA10127; Sat, 18 Dec 1999 22:16:40 -0800 (PST) X-Origination-Site: Received: from omni.xylan.com by mailhub.xylan.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4 (mailhub 2.1 [HUB])) id WAA09033; Sat, 18 Dec 1999 22:16:40 -0800 Received: from softweyr.com ([204.68.178.39]) by omni.xylan.com (4.1/SMI-4.1 (xylan engr [SPOOL])) id AA00198; Sat, 18 Dec 99 22:16:34 PST Message-Id: <385C789C.DD290597@softweyr.com> Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1999 23:18:04 -0700 From: Wes Peters Organization: Softweyr LLC X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (X11; U; FreeBSD 3.3-RELEASE i386) X-Accept-Language: en Mime-Version: 1.0 To: Matthew Dillon Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Cool little 100BaseTX switch - they're coming down in price References: <199912190410.UAA01049@apollo.backplane.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Matthew Dillon wrote: > > I picked up a nifty little D-Link DSS-5+ 5-port 10/100 switch today > CompUSA had a 5-port network kit labeled 'DFE-910' which had the > DSS-5+ and two DFE-530TX+ NIC Cards ('rl' driver), plus cables, for $130. Warehouse.com sells the Netgear FS105 for $99.99. If you open them up, don't be surprised to see exactly the same chipset, and perhaps even the same board. You'd be astonished how many of these commodity items are OEM'd from the same vendor. I have a nice, shiny new 8-port 10/100 switch at work, with ATM-155 uplink, ATM T1/E1 Circuit emulation on the front, and AAL-1 inputs for bridging your PBX over the same DS3 or OC3 uplink circuit. It costs a bit more than $130, or at least it will when I get the IP routing software working. ;^) > It appears to operate quite nicely. I can run all 5 ports at > 100BaseTX speeds in full-duplex mode and it seems to take whatever > I throw at it, though I didn't life test it so I don't know what > it can actually handle. It seems to have sufficient buffering to > deal with fragmented NFS packets without losing anything so I'm happy. If you can spare it for a few days, I'll be glad to plug it into a SmartBits and tell you what it'll REALLY do. > Prices have fallen a lot in the last year. I'm happy to be able to > get rid of my HUBs, I was constantly having to deal with packet loss > when running saturation tests and never able to figure out what > was causing it. Switches are a better solution, no doubt about it. They are well worth the cost, even if you're just trying to pep up an old 10Base-T network. Investing in 10Base-T switches at this time is a false economy; for only a few dollars more per port you can get 10/100 switches like yours and upgrade machines to Fast Ethernet as budget allows. > Note that buy.com lists a 'DFE-910' kit for around $100, but their > description of it is that it contains a hub rather then a switch. I > know what I got at CompUSA was a switch, not a hub, but I don't know > what you'd get if you bought the DFE-910 part number from buy.com. Warehouse.com lists the D-Link DSS-5+ as a 5 port auto 10/100 desktop switch ext pwr (external power, I presume) for $109.99. I suspect that might be the same as what you got, despite the clash in product nomenclature. -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message