3Com’s 24-port Switch

This latest switch from 3Com has several interesting software and hardware features. It has 24 ports that can be auto-configured for either 10/100 Mbps connections. It has space for adding extra modules for Gigabit or Fast Ethernet Fiber connection. It has several useful management features that can be used to configure the switch for different deployment scenarios.

The SuperStack is quite easy to setup, and is ready for action soon after you take it out of the box. All its ports are set to auto-negotiation, and could therefore automatically detect the optimum speed, duplex modes, and flow control for all the clients we connected to it. It can work in both full and half duplex modes.

There are some interesting manageability features in the switch, which can be accessed either by connecting a terminal to its RS232 port, or a PC with a Web browser over the network. It also supports SNMP and RMON, making it manageable using network-management software. By default the switch doesn’t have an IP address, so we had to configure it by connecting it to a PC using the accompanying RS232 cable.

Some useful features include bandwidth aggregation, resilient links, and support for the Spanning Tree protocol. The first allows you to aggregate the bandwidth of up to four ports on the switch at 100 Mbps Full Duplex, giving a maximum connection speed of 800 Mbps. The advantage of this is that even if one of the links fails, the connection doesn’t break, as the remaining ones continue to function. The reliance feature allows you to create a back-up port for any port. This port will take over the moment the primary port fails. Finally, the Spanning Tree Protocol prevents network loops and allows you to implement parallel paths for network traffic.

Traffic prioritization, multicast filtering, and VLAN support are other important features. The switch does traffic prioritization by defining QoS (Qualtiy of Service) policies in the switch. You can define the policy based on application based, location based, or user-based classifiers. Multicast filtering allows you to send multicast traffic only to multicast group workstations. VLAN support lets you create up to 60 VLANs using the switch.

These features are easily configurable using the switch’s management interface, especially the one over a Web browser. We found the console-based interface a little difficult to manage, as the menu options are not numbered. You have to either know the abbreviations for each menu item, or type the menu item name to enter it.

Overall, it’s a good buy for networks requiring manageable switches.

Anil Chopra at PCQ Labs