starting fresh - go with Cisco or HP switches

[Dana Burd]

Moving to a new building and starting with new network equipment. REALLY struggling with the decision on whether to invest in Cisco or HP.

If I go CISCO, I'd be looking at 2950 (10/100) and 2970 (1000) series switches.

If I go HP, I'd be looking at 2650 (10/100) and 2848 (1000) switches.

With HP I could get 1G to a 1/4 of my 200 locations and still save $. With Cisco there would only be 1G for servers and at the core.

We have 10 hp 4000 and 8000 series printers here and they are great. we've had one 24xx something switch here, and we beat it with a baseball bat. I've heard horror stories with the cheap Dell 5000 series switches, and I've heard the lower end 3com uses the same Accton guts as those Dells. If I'm spending 12-16 grand on switches, I want them to work perfectly. a couple VLANs and a couple simple trunks is as elaborate as I'll get with these for the next 5 years.

any experience, good or bad, with the switches I mentioned would be greatly appreciated.

[Mohamed Hamedi · Accepted solution]

The HP boxs are excelent and very reliable.

The 2848 for starters has a higher performance throughput than the 2970 and backplane speed.
It has basic IP routing where the 2970 doesn't.

The 2650 and the 2950 are more similar than different, except the 2650 supports IP static routes.

The hardware next business day replacement is great and don't forget HP has life time warranty for the switches, can't go wrong there.
As you mentioned the cost saving is huge.

[OLARU Dan]

Get one HP 5308XL for your networking center: you'll use it for aggregating all other switches. It is great for inter-vlan routing at wirespeed (keeps the inter-vlan traffic off your dedicated routers), and you can set Access Control Lists (which 4100GL can't do) before entering the dedicated routers.