His work experiences led him to open a catering company, eventually becoming a sous chef in several fine LA restaurants. One of the most popular top-level routers, the Cisco SG350-10P (around $200) provides 10 ports, two of which allow fiber connections. He enjoys all sorts of barely necessary gadgets, specialty computing, cutting-edge video games, and modern social policy. Most people with an ambitious home lab or small office LAN to administer will be satisfied by the Mikrotik CRS125 (around $180).
It might not work like a real switch and forward frames/packets at wire speed like a switch with real ASIC/FPGA devices would but if someone can write software to run on a switch, someone can write software to make that software think it is running on a switch.
The L3 routing functionality might be worth it. Router is going to be pfSense still haven't decided if I should build my own pfSense box or install it on my ProxMox server. Juniper doesn't offer anything good? And, all big Cisco switches sound like fighter jets at startup.
The article in which I share my know-how of building a minimalistic lab using… only a PC, switch, and laptop.
The newer SG line small business switches are 'Cisco-like' and approximate some of the features of the bigger ones.
I did pretty much the same thing you did, buy for learning. Consisting of 8 RJ45 sockets with 10GBase-T functionality, the TrendNet EdgeSmart TEG-7080ES (about $540) delivers considerably more bandwidth per connection than most.
Cisco, of course, is one of the most famous names in LAN hardware, and for good reason; their stuff is usually pretty expensive, but it's basically the standard in many parts of the industry. He has given talks on debunking pseudoscience, the Dunning-Kruger effect, culinary technique, and traveling.
Unplugging one of the squirrel cage fans helps a lot.But it has all the layer 3 features you'd likely want to play with, you'd be hard pressed to find something faster, cheaper, with solid support for dynamic routing.
If your goal is Cisco, Pearson has a great sim for ~$100. When it comes to building a lab the best bet is to find one of the LAN Base switch models as it will provide the best overall investment and usefulness.
On the practical side, it will be the main switch for about 8 desktops, a file server, a virtualization server with various virtual machines going up and down, 2 servers that are constantly reformatted with whatever I'm playing with at the moment, an AP with about 10 clients, etc.
About a week ago I made a similar thread which you may be interested in.
Just about the perfect size for most home networks, the Ubiquiti EdgeSwitch 8 (appx. 16 ports should be good. 16 ports should be good.
In this part, I discuss how to build an ESXi environment using PC and ESXi 6.7 U1. The Aruba 2930F (around $1145) is one of HP's most talked-about releases, and this 24-port model should take care of medium-scale LANs without issue.
Most recently I expanded my home lab to include a Layer 3 switch. I’ve divided this topic into 2 parts as I am unsure whether you guys like long-reads.
The main purpose is for education, so I'm intentionally getting a switch that is very overkill on the feature side for my setup. Want something where I can get my feet wet with some advanced routing, vlans, etc.
Home Lab – Adding a Layer 3 Switch to my growing Home Lab.
$150 budget best managed switch for homelab Want something where I can get my feet wet with some advanced routing, vlans, etc.
$50-100.
They offer a wide range of features and abilities, including static and dynamic routing, DHCP IP address assignment, and OSFP capability. Skip to the best layer 3 switch on Amazon. My setup is a refurb Dell tower server w/ x2 quad xenon 2.8ghz , 4 x Seagate 3TB Enterprise Drives in a MDADM RAID10 (Software). The 3550 mentioned above is a great switch for learning the basics.
help fund the Wiki. I'd get a pair of used switches for the lab.
You'll only get a couple gigabit ports for that price but for a lab where you want to learn about configuring switches, speed isn't super important.
Hi all, I'm looking at getting a managed switch for my home lab. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts.
Not sure what your server situation is, but that might be a decent idea. After two decades of product and market research, Chris has a keen sense of what people want to know and how to explain it clearly. by Christopher Thomas. TL;DR: There are a surprising number of options out there. The basic topics that originally started me down this path are VLANs and link aggregation, but I realize that there's a lot more interesting stuff that I've never been exposed to before, so it's time to play. The basic topics that originally started me down this path are VLANs and link aggregation, but I realize that there's a lot more interesting stuff that I've never been exposed to before, so it's time to play.On the cheaper side, I think I've settled on the TP-LINK TL-SG3216. https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/2yvcs3/cheap_energy_efficient_managed_gigabit_switch/.
Here are some of the most recommended by systems analysts and other IT professionals. Unless things have changed (it's been a few years since I used GNS3 for my studies), it can only stimulate basic switch functions.
There's the Brocade/Foundry FLS648 which someone recommended. Home Lab Routers and switches After many weeks of research, online comparisons, reading reviews, watching YouTube videos and countless hours spent on /r/homelab , I can safely say that the following three companies’ devices will fully cover all of your routing and … There are a couple of low port count gigabit Catalyst switches that can be had for relatively cheap, couple hundred or so. we may earn commissions to
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I am doing vlans, port-channeling etc too. Also got to learn the differences between Hardware RAID, Software RAID, and FAKE / BIOS RAID. © 2020 Condé Nast.
Layer 3 switches utilize a smart management system that gives administrators increased control over network configuration and security.
Layer 3 routing projects require considerable knowledge of certain IT subjects, and if you're this far, you know there are hundreds of different switches to choose from.
$50-100. It offers eight RJ45 and two SFP ports, and allows a total non-blocking throughput of 10 gigabytes. They're all 16+ ports, and support VLANs, and other managed switch features. Hi all,I'm looking at getting a managed switch for my home lab.
The TrendNet we highlighted offers 8 configurable 10-gigabit ports, so while it is very expensive for such a small unit, you can be certain that its bandwidth ceiling will never get in the way -- though you'll need some high-speed hardware for all the attached devices to take advantage of such high throughput. Is there another switch that I should consider, with the restriction that it must be fanless?
Posted on September 28, 2012 Updated on September 28, 2012. It's available with 10 to 52 ports with a variety of power over Ethernet and uplink options, and this 16-connector version is a great size for an advanced home or small business network. in this review, you may contact us, but we cannot guarantee a response, even if you send us flowers. Anything can be emulated. SRW2016-K9-NA is the part number. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast.