Switching to Netgear

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I have been on the lookout for a replacement switch for my home network of about ten computers and game systems.  I have been using an old outdated Cisco 3500XL that was starting to fade.  I had to cut the power to the fans because of the noise and I wanted to act before it died.

I had some technical criteria for my new switch.  It had to have:

• Fully managed switch
• Gigabit Ethernet
• Sniffer port able to watch one or more ports
• SNMP management
• VLAN support
• QoS support
• Upgradeable firmware
• Affordable

Putting all of those criteria together with that last item made it a challenge to say the least.  From my experience, I knew that eliminated Cisco and the Dell products that I have used in the pasts were not something I wanted to repeat.

I had some experience with Netgear products, especially with their wireless routers and small SOHO hubs and unmanaged switches.  Having children in college and one now living alone, they have been the easiest devices to configure and secure, not to mention highly reliable.  I have yet to have any significant difficulty with these products.  So, I decided to review their website and see what they have been doing in the area of switching.

The Netgear Web Site – not for the faint at heart

Their site can be daunting and I feel a little sorry for customers that are not as technical and detailed oriented as most of us IT geeks are.  You need to know what you are looking at and why.  Just browsing to their home products and clicking on “Advanced Smart Switches” takes you to a page that talks about switching products, but does not show you anything.  They just talk about the switches they offer for small businesses and enterprise. I guess that is fair, but why have the link in the first place?  If they really think that home networks do not need this type of switch and they are not going to offer you anything, why have it?  OK, this may be a nit, so lets move on.  What’s this?  You lick on t he “More Information” page and it takes you to a page about “Smart Switches”.  Still no products, just descriptions.  Again, it highlights an area for more information which takes you to the page that started this infinite loop.  Time to abandon ship and look for another vendor?  A lot of users might, but I know that my best bet is to follow the business links.

Now, we are in to the meat of what I’m looking for.  They offer a variety of fully managed 10/100/1000 switches and advanced switches, smart switches and ProSafe Plus switches.  Wow!  The options are large and the first thing you’d want to do is see a comparison between all of these options to know where to start looking.  Again, that is all left to the reader and you better have some time on your hands.

I settled in on just the smart  switches to see what I could come up with.  That still left me with about 6-8 switches to evaluate and technical spec sheets and reviews to read. 

Testing the Netgear GS724T

I settled on the GS724T because it appeared to have all of the features that I was looking for in a switch and was not that expensive.  I called my reseller and placed an order.  When the switch arrived, I pulled the old Cisco 3500 and got the new switch up and running.  All of the configuration is done from a web-based user interface which anyone familiar with Netgear would find easy to use.  Everything was running and I was happy with the device, not to mention the sigh of relief that I was running a newer piece of hardware and it was much quieter.

My next step was to start monitoring the switch with SNMP – in particular pointing MRTG at the unit.  This is were I found problems.  I was unable to name the ports on the switch.  This is critical to anyone who manages switches.  If you have 24 or 48 ports, you are not going to remember what devices are plugged into which ports.  Using ARP tables and mac-address tables is just not good enough and besides this switch did not show me an ARP table so there was no relationship between the MAC and the IP address.  Without that, you cannot reference the port using your DNS server.

I submitted a ticket to Netgear technical support with my complaints and asked about any firmware upgrades that might solve the problems.  They responded within 12 hours which I absolutely appreciated with their feedback.  Their answer, however, shocked me.  They told me that I was using a GS724Tv2 device that has outdated firmware compared to all the other Netgear switches and that all of my issues were resolved in the GS724Tv3.  Unfortunately, my switch cannot be upgraded with firmware and needed to be replaced.

How was it possible that my reseller was selling outdated hardware?  I called them to complain and warned them about the issues with the older parts.  Now, it is possible that some users are not a picky about their needs, but it is still unacceptable to be selling switches that have firmware copyrighted in 2005.  I demanded an RMA for the switch (which they agreed to) and I began my search anew.

Enter the GS724TR-100NAS

My search led to this switch which had features I did not need, but I was struck by the reseller’s offer of buy one, get one free.  The switch was more expensive, but I figured I could sell the other one and it would ease the burden.  When that switch arrived, I installed it immediately and the difference was significant.  I had all the features I needed and then some.  I could rename ports, get ARP and MAC tables with cross referencing and the SNMP MIBs worked perfect.  I was able to get MRTG reporting up very quickly and could manage the switch with ease.  The amount of features on this switch is outstanding for the price they charge and with two SFP (Small Form-factor Pluggable) ports it allows me to add two more ports using copper or fiber.

This switch has been in my house now for a few months and I cannot be more satisfied with the product.  I have used the sniffing port (called port mirroring) on many occasions and it works well at any speed.  The performance is excellent and completely reliable in everything I could throw at it.  Within the LAN, I have been unable for force QoS queuing regardless of the background traffic I have thrown at it.  While I do not have accurate performance testing hardware, the real-life items are what I deal with and it passed in flying colors.

I could easily see using these as distribution switches in the enterprise using 802.3ad LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol) connections to a central core switch.  It would provide all the capabilities and performance the network administrators demand and the costs that will please any CIO.

Article by Steve Van Domelen

Steve has written 47 awesome articles.