Green ethernet

[Hans Manhave]

Just looking at two cheap or inexpensive 1Gb switches I have laying around (Encore & D-Link)

Which one should I use?  The one that says 'green ethernet' and has a 2A power supply or the one that doesn't make a 'green' statement but uses a 1A power supply?  No other data available at the moment.  Both have eight ports, I'm only needing two (one in, one out).

I'm leaning toward the 2 amp one, figuring that the more power is available the more likely it will succeed in pushing all the data faster.  I realize I should have a better class of switch, but that will come later.  This is just sitting in the closet from a project.

[Bloody Jack Kidd]

The move toward green networking gear introduces a number of power saving features and you cannot tell from the power supply itself how green it may be.  Especially with PoE switches, the green features will not power unconnected ports or not provide power to port that are not connected to a PoE endpoint.

But as you are likely aware, a sticker that says GREEN, doesn't make it so.

If you want to know which switch will be "faster" - check the geeky tech specs and compare the backplane speeds.  This will indicate the packet switching power of the switch.  The more Gbps the better.

[Bloody Jack Kidd]

backplane is also sometimes referred to as total switching fabric...

[Hans Manhave]

Thank you!

Huge difference between the two.  At least, according to the specs.  Encore with 1.5Gbps and D-Link with 16Gbps.  So big of a difference that I had to look several times to make sure it was the same metric.  All other stats appear to be the same.

D-Link DGS-2208, Encore ENHGS-800.  I also gained some clarity on the amps.  The D-Link is at 5V, 2A while the Encore is 12V, 1A.  But the switch fabric is what I found to be 16 and 1.5.  That is significant, I think.

[Bloody Jack Kidd]

it appears to be a very significant difference.

[Jim Jensen]

Good info to know. I never knew how to compare different ones. Thanks for posting. I have learned something already today, so I can go home early!

[Hans Manhave]

Just looked at the specs of some Dell gigabit switches.  One certainly does get something for the money.  I can see that this would start playing an important role in the home environment.  All the video & audio being streamed while other stuff is going on too.  Possibly even home security systems being implemented.  No use in playing around with the little stuff.  If it needs to work, it needs to work well.

I thought 8 ports at 16Gbps would be as much as was needed or possibly.  That would be 1Gbps up, 1 down per port.  Then I notice that oversubscription and stacking features could be reasons to be far above that perceived limit.

Certainly validates my experience with "home" equipment at the office shortly after Christmas.  Glad I didn't accept that.  I had, what I was told was, a great 16 port 1Gb switch, but the performance was far below the 10/100 Dell 3324 switch that broke and I replaced it with another 3324 and two 3348's.  They only go at 100mb max for the ports, 1Gb for the uplink.  It is many times faster than the 10/100/1000 switch the local store tried to make me happy with.  Funny thing is that those older Dell units are just as much or cheaper than those low capacity 1 gig switches.

[Bloody Jack Kidd]

We mostly have Cisco gear now, since our acquisition - but I've clung to my HP ProCurve.  It's no longer part of the data center, but I use it in my own office since I always have a handful of systems hooked up at any given time.

[Bloody Jack Kidd]

Forwarding rate is another useful spec - measured in packets per second - if all packets were the same size this might not be important, but the aforementioned switching fabric rate (measured in Gbps) is a theoretical maximum somewhat limited by the switch's packet switching ability.

I don't think you need to have a complete understanding of the two to make an informed decision on a switch purchase, just be aware so you can compare apples to apples.