What features do you look for when looking for a switch?

As some of you may already know, the popular Cisco CE500 series switch will reach end of sale late this year. We would like your feedback in what features are the most important to you, so we can let Cisco know which products would be best for the donation catalogue to replace the CE500s.

Specifically, in terms of prioirty how important are console management, PoE, and Gigabit ports? Would you rather have higher-end products with more admin fees? or possibly SOHO/mid-range devices and lower admin fees. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

best

Kevin

After seeing a presentation today on how the server connections are going to 10GB and soon 40GB I wonder how long 100 MB ports will be available on servers, so having a Cisco switch available with 1GB port(s) may be valuable.

Dave

See if Cisco will agree to more liberal donation criteria; most orgs do not qualify for their gear

Along Jesse's vein (and i'm not trying to be flip) I would like to see a more reasonable time frame to approval and delivery of product.  I stopped recommending Cisco products from TechSoup years ago because it would take a quarter year (3 months) to get the gear, sometimes longer.  Sometimes just to find out later that no, you can't get any.  It's nice they donate, but it would sure be nicer if they would get products out the door in a more reasonable time frame.  even 30 days would be better.

Just out of curiosity, would most nonprofits really need a gigabit switch? If Cisco's willing to donate them at a reasonable price, I would say full steam ahead, but I don't really think that many nonprofits are pushing enough data around to warrant paying more for gigabit. If we're looking for more midrange switches, I'm a staunch supporter of the Catalyst 2960 series; I've always had great success with them, and to date have never had one fail (I have had Dell and Netgear switches fail on me, but not any 2960s yet! Fingers crossed...)

My two cents, anyway. Gigabit would be great as a forward-looking options, but if it will drive up the price to unreasonable limits for nonprofits I think 2960 models would suit us just fine!

Our non profit uses Gigabit switches, and we are not that large. I am suprised that the Cisco offering is not a gb switch to begin with.

I'm not surprised.  In my experience for applications small or large, 100 mbps is fine.

yeah, same. I've never worked on anything ultra-large, but even the largest business (about 60ish people or so) I ever worked at never came close to clogging 100mbps, and they were developers pushing tons of data around.

I fully agree about the 100MB for most server connections, but as they were talking about the future of server connections, I saw that the 10/100/1000 interface on servers may be short lived and you may find server NICS supporting 1000/10G/40G  with 10/100 not to be found.  This could impact what we can get for servers either donated, or purchased.  And as we explore virtulization the 100MB connection may need to be 1000.

Dave

Well, our parent system has been moving an awful lot to virtual servers, which has been in the works for a couple years now. That could be the reason that so many of our switches are gb switches. They were put in place in anticipation of all the virtu-osity implementation.

POE is increasingly important; but at least one Gigabit uplink port is a must.

And yes, generally speaking higher end products are better even if they require a somewhat higher admin fee.

Our problem with Cisco donations to date is the restriction on "national" organizations -- even if we're a loosely coupled affiliate.  As a result, we're getting used 3COM switch gear off the Internet -- for about the same money.

Thanks everyone for your feedback. We are looking at a variety of products and it sounds as if Gb ports are nice but the lack of which is not a deal-breaker, while PoE seems less important for now, especially since we don't have a sustained phone program at the moment. As always we working with partners like Cisco to address their philanthropic goals, as well as maximize the breadth and reach of the program, but it's up to them what product catalogue they choose. Personally even though not many orgs have used up to their Mb limit I also think that Gb is where we are heading and we want to best future-proof the sector. 3 years ago we wouldn't have imagined the ubiquity of virtualization or SAN so if anything we want to provide orgs with equipment that will last more than 5 years if possible.

best

-Kevin