Hot switches, cool features

Headnote

HP, Cisco and FORE combine great performance and flexibility to lead tests of 100Base-T switches.

The Fast Ethernet switch market is hot, which accounts in part for the large number of products in this Buyer's Guide.

We tested the performance and manageability characteristics of nine of the top switches. See the ScoreCard at the bottom of the page for our ratings, and read the Review beginning below for the complete details. By comparing price and performance among the switches, we came up with a Best Buy - see the sidebar on page 39.

There are far more switches available than we could test. The Product Chart that begins on page 41 lists a large selection, while the Interactive Buyer's Guide on Network World Fusion (www.nwfusion.com) contains more and lets you find the switch that's right for you based on criteria you select.

Confused about where to start? Turn to page 41 for a Checklist of factors to consider and buying advice.

The third-leading cause of global warming -- that's how hot the 100Base-T switch market is today.

The best of these devices offers blazing throughput, sizzling management and flow- and trafficcontrol features. But a check of the prices of some Fast Ethernet switches can throw ice water on your enthusiasm pretty quickly, and others' ability to live up to their performance promise is only lukewarm. Only half of the 100Base-T switches we just tested could handle all the traffic users could reasonably deliver.

Among the best switches, HewlettPackard Co.'s AdvanceStack Switch SOOT, Cisco Systems, Inc.'s Catalyst 5002 and FORE Systems, Inc.'s modular ES-3810 showed excellent performance with eight, 12 and 16 ports, respectively. However, Cisco's switch was considerably more expensive than the others. The two lowest ranked switches, 3Com Corp.'s SuperStack II Switch 3000 TX and Network Peripherals, Inc.'s (NPI) FE-1200, each lack support for 10/100 autosensing, and each failed to handle a full traffic load.

When evaluating switches, comparing price and throughput helps determine the value you get for your equipment dollar. The story "Not yet a commodity" (see page 39) highlights our pick for Best Buy among these products.

Selecting the test candidates

In this test, we compared 100Base-T switches with eight to 16 ports from vendors with the greatest share of...