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Looking for input on 24 port gigabit switches

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Niku-Sama

Member
Joined
Jan 13, 2005
alright now that I have a some what decent job making several bucks and hour more and getting an actual factual 40 hours per week, unlike my last job at hellmart, I am able to finally finish or in this case start a lot of the projects around the house.

one of those is wire up the house since I am not a fan of wireless.....at all. if I could plug my phone into the wired network I would.

I figure a 24 port would be a good starting point, I don't have a big house but I may be running to out lying buildings too. I am thinking 5 ports in the living room 2 in one bedroom 2 or possibly more in another with my computer and game collection, 1 in the kitchen, 2 in the laundry room (printer + ???) and then 2 more in the garage. possibly 2 more out to an out building, that's another project and depending on how bad it is it might just get torn down but as I say, projects.

any way I felt 24 ports would be a good start and leave some room if we decided to add to the house.
I don't really have many requirements other than I want all ports to be gigabit and preferably IPv6 compatible. As far as price well cheaper the better of course, I've been looking at business surplus new and used.

I was considering an Allied Telesis AT-9924TL-EMC2 but I cant find much about the EMC2 variant, just the regular 9924T here: https://www.alliedtelesis.com/products/switches/9924t
this was business surplus NOS for about $50 (or best offer). after some digging I found some dell networking stuff that uses EMC as part of their branding so I don't know if its an OS used between the 2 or if theres some sort of management tech they share or if dell absorbed a branch of another company and it overlapping a bit.

I thought I would ask if any one had any other ideas of a gigabit switch I could get or if this was decent enough for home use

i'm not sure what to do for a firewall yet. I am fairly certain I have everything else though, got the crimp and punchdown tools, cable ends, and I some how wound up with one of these: https://www.cableorganizer.com/computer-cabinets/kendall-howard-racks/kh-security-cabinet.html
 
Ubiquiti, go there and take a look at the options. They are my go to for all things networking as they are the only supplier I’ve seen that makes ISP grade equipment that is available on the consumer market.

They are a bit of a bear to set up but the quality is top notch. For example I intend to purchase one of their managed switches (edge router) as it has an SFP port(s) for long haul fiber runs that I am going to use to join the two houses on the property together.

Most of their stuff has a GUI not telnet which is a big plus for me as I hate telnet lol. It’s difficult to find good isp grade equipment as most is hoarded for spares (believe me I know) or sold to other ISPs for spares. So this is the closest thing I’ve found without breaking the bank
 
Alright i'll take a look at both of those when I get home tonight
Thanks guys
 
Ubiquiti is a bit rich for me still.
I'm waiting on a response from Allied Telesis about their switch differences, any of their newer stuff is locked away behind a user log in that I don't feel like I should need to do in order to get comparison specs
I'm searching a bit more on the cisco router, how is it managed? meaning is it web ui or console or both?
 
best used one that is recommended often is the dell powerconnect 5224 can grab them up on ebay for as low as 20 bucks shipped sometimes, usually need some new fans but those are cheapish. hell of a deal for a 24 port managed rackmount switch.
 
oh damn those are cheap, no IPv6 but hell.
cheapest one on e-bay right now is $30 shipped, oddly enough from a recycler we just ordered about 10 computers from that came in well cleaned so at least it wont be full of dust.

since I got some people here what should I do in terms of a firewall you think?
I'm having a hard time finding something that doesn't choke off the bandwidth a bunch
 
oh damn those are cheap, no IPv6 but hell.
cheapest one on e-bay right now is $30 shipped, oddly enough from a recycler we just ordered about 10 computers from that came in well cleaned so at least it wont be full of dust.

since I got some people here what should I do in terms of a firewall you think?
I'm having a hard time finding something that doesn't choke off the bandwidth a bunch

pfsense on an old machine you got laying around or you can build a low power machine it doesnt take hardly any cpu power.

as for the ipv6 i dont use it, i have it disabled on most of my equipment because it just causes nothing but headaches.
 
well some bad news about putting PfSense on something. it appears my stores of old hardware was exposed. Exposed to high heat it seems, they are AM2 era stuff that would have been good I think but most of them have bad leaky caps. I did run them very hard before they were put in storage, longer and harder than one probably should have for daily use but they didn't fail while using but I am sure it didn't help things.
the only things to survive were a few LGA 1366 systems but only one had a CPU (1st gen i7) and ram and it was going to be the computer I set up in the garage, something able to game while there are visitors sleeping in my computer room. Plus I didn't want such a power hog on all day to act as a fire wall.

kinda my fault, had it up in the attic but I didn't know the attic fan had froze up. This summers been bad too, more 90F+ days in a row than I ever remember. I hope a sub 90 degree day comes soon
oddly enough the super old stuff (think earlier than 486) is still ok and segregated from the damaged stuff destined to the recycler now.
 
My personal choice would be the Meraki MS Series from Cisco Meraki. It's cloud managed has all the features you need. It's what I use in my home office. Plus if you only need 8 ports to start off with you can get the MS220 for free by watching the webinar at Meraki website. It will give the switch and a 3yr Enterprise Support License for free. So you can try the switch keep it and if you like buy the MS220 later.

Matter of fact you can get a free Firewall with the Davanced Security and Enterprise License for Free with the Firewall Webinar so if nothing else do that an MX64 would be a perfect for you. They also have a webinar for a free MH 33 but I know you're not a fan of wireless so....
 
My $0.02...

If you don't need a managed switch, and want new with warranty, try something like this:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122058

We have several of these deployed to smaller clients (who also have small IT budgets). For more robust solutions we've had success with some lower end (managed) HP models, like the Procurve 18xxG-24 series. Those older Dell connect switches are workhorses and a good suggestion, although buying used you are of course likely going to be replacing it sooner than later.

For firewall, unless you have a very specific set of needs, then any basic home router will usually offer port forwarding and QoS support. If you like to tinker and don't mind open source, find a router that's DD-WRT compatible. While I hesitate to say your router/firewall isn't important, it's probably not as critical as you think. Brute force intrusion is rare from what I understand and read. Most of the time the web interface is the weak point, so disabling that or restricting access to the web interface to only certain IPs you specify would be adequate. Disabling PING is also not a bad idea (again, unless that's something you need if you will be accessing your home network/services remotely).
 
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