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We're in the process of upgrading one of our racks from 100MB to 1GB. We currently have a 48 port unmanaged 100MB switch (3Com Baseline Switch 2250). Can anyone recommend a 48 port 1GB switch ideally under £500.

Many Thanks Nick

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As others have mentioned it's difficult to offer up suggestions based on the information we've been given. What sort of network features do you need today and what sort of network expansion and demands will you have in the next two years? A list of must haves and nice to haves would help. – 3dinfluence Aug 18 '09 at 17:53
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You're looking for a switch for less than 500 GBP which suggests you're in the UK... Check out this 3Com Baseline 29486-SFP 48 Port Managed Layer 2 Gigabit at dabs.com. A fraction under 400 GBP + VAT (probably about 460 includig VAT and Del.) I've used them before and they've always been fine for me, great value for money.

Blurb from the website:

"The 3Com Baseline Switch 2900 Plus Family is an affordable managed Layer 2 Gigabit switch family with flexible uplinks. It is ideal for small to medium businesses looking for a cost effective switching solution but require the control and features not available with unmanaged options. The Baseline Switch 2948-SFP Plus has 48 10/100/1000 ports and four dual-purpose Gigabit ports (copper or SFP-based fiber) to connect to high-performance computers, servers, or core network backbones.

This "smart" switch provides features that can help to build a converged network, with support for auto-voice VLAN, SNMP-based management, IGMP snooping and query, IEEE 802.1X and advanced Access Control Lists (ACLs). It also supports Spanning Tree and Rapid Spanning Tree, traffic prioritization, priority queuing and VLANs which ensure optimal use of available bandwidth.

This Baseline Plus switch is operational straight out-of-the-box. The web management interface provides an intuitive, menu driven process for users to quickly configure the switch during initial setup and manage during normal operation."

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I was going to suggest this very switch. I use a pair of them to do HA stuff at my production facility. Very nice feature set for that price. – Matt Simmons Oct 26 '09 at 13:00
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Without more info on what type of network load you have on the current switch it is hard to make a recommendation. I would get one that supports gigabit+jumbo frames if you do a lot of data between the systems connected (and if the systems support jumbo). In any case I would suggest a managed switch for better performance and security tweaking

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Thank you for your response. It's a high load network where all the rack servers are connected up. There's a lot of traffic externally to the servers and also server to server. Do you know of a managed switch thats relatively simple to configure? – user2946 Aug 18 '09 at 14:52
Dell has some that are pretty easy, but a common problem is easy to configure doesn't usually equate to high reliability. I have used Cisco and Extreme switches, which are very reliable, but are a bit of a challenge to get through the IOS. You may want to also look into link aggregation for your servers, I haven't dealt with it so i can't give you to much. For specific switches that are high performance I'd go with an extreme summit, or a cisco catalyst 2900 series, however they may be out of your budget range – Jimsmithkka Aug 18 '09 at 19:59
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Use craigslist, they have good deals

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I have used about four of these for some local small businesses. They have all worked like a champ so far, though they really are not that great either. I have carved two VLANs into one of them, and other than the web interface not matching the layout of the physical ports it worked great. I haven't tried any of the QoS or jumbo frames or really any of the advanced features yet.

NETGEAR ProSafe GS748T

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122147

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i'm quite happy with dell's powerconnect 5448, dont look at listprice - call sales rep and see what price you can get. i bought recently one for price around your budget limit.

it's not cisco... but it's still quite feature rich.

if you have more money to spend - i'd suggest something from HP's procurve 2xxx or 3xxx.

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