[c-nsp] Cheap ass mini switch that does SNMP, 802.1p, VLAN, IGMP?

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net wrote:
> Seriously its a pretty good switch.  I have a business that sells
> Linksys stuff and these are about the best value out there right now.
> They have models with 1-2 GBIC slots too, and ones that can do
> 10/100/1000.  They are a good deal.  Contact me if interested, we use
> them alot, and are
> starting to replace some older stuff with it.
>

The ISP I work at used to recommend Linksys BEFSR41s to customers looking
for cheap routers on the end of their DSL lines.  We won't make that
mistake
twice, let me tell you.

Those devices work for about 1-2 years max then start failing.  I've gone
over various forums on the Internet, some people blame the later versions
of
firmware (I have as a matter of fact seen a firmware update make one of
these
routers become unstable) some people blame inadequate heatsinking and
have various schemes for taking apart the cases and epoxying heatsinks to
various chips.

Along with this we have see high failure rates on dumb hubs from Linksys,
and the failures once again occur usually after about 1-2 years and cause
a lot of time-wasting troubleshooting, because they generally don't fail
all at once, they start getting intermittent and falling down at higher
packet
rates.

These days there are even cheaper 2-port Ethernet routers on the market -
for example the Airlink +'s - which we are recommending.  While we don't
have the institutional experience with Airlinks that we do with the
Linksys,
the Airlinks couldn't possibly be worse than the Linksyses are.  If I'm
going
to get screwed over I'd rather it be by a $12.95 device than a $49.95
device.

If Linksys is still around as a separate brand 10 years from now I might
take
a look at them again, but before then, no way.

The one thing I haven't seen raised yet is why don't you get a used
switch off
Ebay that has all the features you want?  After all why buy a brand new
Yugo
when you can get a 6 year old Cadillac for the same price?

Ted