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PORT OF CALL The ProCurve 2524's Web-based management display can show both current port utilization and recent errors and alerts.
It may not be cool or sexy, but the Fast Ethernet switch is essential plumbing for today's enterprise LANs.
With nearly every desktop and notebook network interface card- enabled for both 10-Mbps Ethernet and 100-Mbps Fast Ethernet connectivity, the era of 10Base-T is dead for all except the oldest legacy networks. Given network usage patterns and the low price of switching ports, there's no significant benefit to using a hub-the cost savings aren't worth the bandwidth limitations. For all new installations or for retrofitting an old workgroup, a Fast Ethernet switch with gigabit uplinks to the backbone switch or router is the way to go.
Hewlett-Packard has made this type of workgroup switch the core product of its Roseville, Calif.-based networking group. And its latest product family, consisting of the 12-port ProCurve 2512 and 24- port ProCurve 2524 managed switches, keeps pushing the price and features envelopes.
On the surface, the switches look rather innocuous: 12 or 24 10/ 100 ports, two gigabit-capable slots for adding expansion modules and a rather noisy fan. The best attributes are hidden: a 9.6-Gbps switch fabric, SNMP- and RMON-based management with a Web-enabled management console, and support for a plethora of Ethernet extensions. These extensions include 802.3ab trunking with LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol), 803.1Q VLANs with tagging, 802.1p traffic prioritization and 802.1x secure login to the switch. Not bad for the price: It's $1,039 for the ProCurve 2524 model we tested, or $43 per Fast Ethernet port. (The essentially identical 12-port version isn't nearly as cost-effective at $819, or $68 per port.)
We set up the ProCurve 2524 in our lab, initially...