Latency of enterprise level gigabit switches vs consumer switches?

[Angry]

Im looking to upgrade from my old Cisco 2900XL switch, its been very dependable and almost hate to upgrade from it, but Im really starting to need a gigabit switch.

Ive seen few posts on various forums that say the enterprise level switches have a better latency than consumer grade switches like some of the ones Asus makes.

Is this true?

I saw a huge improvement on everything going from a WRT5g2 router with DD-WRT to running DD-WRT x86 in VMware and running out to my Cisco switch.
Is it because most of the consumer grade switches are based off Realtek chipsets?

And does any one know, how say this switch might perform?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704065

 

[Automata]

Going from a "Green" (low power) gigabit switch to a Dell PowerConnect 5224, I haven't noticed any change in throughput or latency. I have a lot more control over the flow of data, though. I'm sure under heavy load, a non-managed switch might start falling behind an enterprise one.

I wouldn't buy a new switch. I paid $30 shipped for my 5224 and had to replace a fan ($10) to get it into perfect condition.

 

[Jmtyra]

Hi Angry

Enterprise grade equipment, switches included, perform better and last longer than consumer grade equipment...generally speaking. However, said performance is only seen in an enterprise environment or through benchmarks. At home, it would be very hard to see the performance difference. There are a slew of functionality and feature aspects that differentiate enterprise equipment from consumer equipment, but I'll stay away from that tangent for now.

I've never heard of that TP-LINK brand, but the switch touts some decent specs; non-blocking throughput, jumbo frame support, and it's one of those 'green' switches that saves you power. I'd use it.

-JT

 

[Shell]

Enterprise vs Consumer... It's pretty much impossible saying one is generally better the other, although one always costs more.

I've found that the fastest switches are dummy(unmanaged) fully-Gbit ones, consumer or enterprise, not surprising since there's so little to do, it's all about how much throughput the thing can handle.

As for reliability, I don't see much relation, there's piles of consumer garbage, but some excellent consumer ones which I find equally reliable.

Unmanaged I haven't had problems with;
$20 TP-LINK TL-SG1005D 5*Gbit - TP-LINK as usual unsettlingly good and cheap.
$30 ASUS GX-D1081 8*Gbit - Some say this one isn't good, but I've never had problems with the several I've used even though they're on for several months at a time.
$109 TRENDnet TEG-S16DG 16*Gbit

Haven't really touched managed much, usually just use routers+switches, they're all pretty much enterprise level, generally annoying to use and moderately reliable, with a few flaming lemons... damn cisco PoE caught fire once.

Edit: Oh ya, that TP-Link switch, a "friend" of mine bought one, hasn't complained about it... I've never had a single bad piece of TP-Link hardware to date. The Chinese government uses them a lot, they're partially nationalized I believe.

 

[insanemonkey]

I don't think you will see a huge difference unless you are pushing a switch pretty hard. Enterprise stuff has some nice features and the support level is a big thing also. If you don't need/want and enterprise features there is not much reason for it.

 

[dark_15]

I prefer managed switches over unmanaged ones so I can easily see whether there's a problem with the switch or a port something is connected to. Even lower-end brands (Linksys/Netgear) provide management capabilities on some of their switches. Layer-2 vlans or layer-3 features/dynamic routing is never a bad thing either...