HP ProCurve— 1800 24G Switch

This is a Gigabit Ethernet switch with 22 auto-sensing 10/100/1000 ports and
2 dual-personality ports for RJ-45 10/100/1000 or mini-GBIC fiber Gigabit
connectivity. It offers packet support for up to 9216 byte frame size for
improved performance in large data transfers. It has a fan-less design for quiet
operation.

The switch supports 8,000 entries in its MAC address table. It also supports
traffic prioritization and broadcast control to ensure QoS. It has a
browser-based management interface that is easy to configure and use. We could
create VLANs through this browser interface and up to 64 VLANs can be configured
in a few clicks. The interface is very detailed and helps in monitoring the
switch as well. There are locater LEDs for each port which help in cable
diagnostics and troubleshooting.

We tested the switch with NetIQ QCheck and were able to get an average
throughput of 571 Mbps for transferring 1,000 KB of payload from one end to the
another and with a response time of 1 ms. While the maximum throughput was
666Mbps, which was less compared to 728 Mbps achieved by DLink DGS-1024D
(reviewed July,2006). When we stressed the switch by flooding it with excessive
traffic, the average throughput dropped to 320 Mbps only.

Bottomline: The switch with its price and manageability options is ideal
for small data centers.