Recommendations on “Managed” Fanless Gigabit Switch 24-Port or Less

When will we consider to buy a managed fanless Gigabit switch 24-port or Less? Common situations where we use fanless Gigabit managed switches are for small office connectivity or for home lab upgrading. In these occasions, we pursue the speed of Gigabit because they can improve the end user experience or enhance work efficiency. At the same time, we require the machine to cause low noise so users in these environments will not be disturbed. As for the management functions, different people want different levels of managing of their network. But in overall managing a fanless Gigabit switch 24-port or less is not expected to be as complex as managing an fully-managed switches. Otherwise, the user experience will not be enhanced but in contrary be decreased. This post will recommend some easily managed 8-24 ports fanless Gigabit switches. For more information of whether to choose a fanless switch or with fan switch, please read the post Should You Buy a Fanless Switch or Switch With Fan?

Recommend Managed Fanless Gigabit Switch 24-Port or Less

A fanless switch usually will not be more than 24 ports. When a switch has more than 24 ports, for example, in a 48-port switch the power supply has to be big enough and there are many ships inside the box, if there’s no fans the air flow might become a problem. So the fanless Gigabit managed switches that we’re going to recommend will be 24-port or less. And they are all non-PoE switches.

Managed Fanless Gigabit Switch 24-Port

There are many fanless Gigabit switches that are 24-port in the market, and the five models that we’re going to recommend are from four brands. They are HP Procurve 1800-24G, 1810-24G smart-managed Gigabit switch, Cisco Catalyst 2960XR-24TS-I 24-port fanless Gigabit switch, FS S2800-24T4F fanless 24-port Gigabit managed switch and Zyxel GS1900-24 smart managed switch.

They have some characteristics in common that make them suitable for being used in places like home office and small office. The similarities of them include low power consumption and Gigabit fiber uplink ports. And of course the most important property is that they are silent in operation.

Another key factor that makes these five switches qualified in the managed fanless Gigabit switch 24-port list is their management function. These five switches are all managed switch that provide full layer 2 traffic management features and simple network management via Web GUI.

Cost-wise the HP 1800-24G, HP 1810-24G, FS S2800-24T4F and Zyxel G1900-24 are all good choices. The Cisco Catalyst 2960XR-24TS-I will cost more than the other four but it surely provides more some more advanced features belonging to layer 3. If we need stronger data transferring capability, Cisco Catalyst 2960XR-24TS-I is a good choice considering its backplane and forwarding rate.

In terms of the power consumption, we can notice that among them the two switch models FS S2800-24T4F and Zyxel G1900-24 consumes up to 20W power, while the FS S2800-24T4F provides two more combo Gigabit SFP/RJ45 ports for up-linking. The cost of buying a brand new fanless Gigabit switch 24-port FS S2800-24T4F or a Zyxel G1900-24 is near, too.

Managed Fanless Gigabit Switch 8/12-Port

If we have only a few devices to be connected to a fanless switch, then we can take 8/12-port fanless Gigabit switch into consideration. There are some good 8-port or 12-port fanless Gigabit managed switches popularly used by end users as well.

The HP 1800-8G and HP 1810-8G are two 8-port fanless Gigabit switches. They both have 8 10/100/1000BASE-T ports. They are cost-effective fanless switches if we do not require CLI management, STP (Spanning Tree Protocol) or other advanced management features. The HP 1800-8G/1810-8G has a switch capacity of 16 Gb/s and a forwarding rate of 11.9 Mpps. The maximum power rating of HP1800-8G is 18W and the HP 1810-8G is 15W. Another two 8-port fanless Gigabit switches of Cisco 2960 and 2960G are also favorable options. They are the Cisco WS-C2960G-8TC-L and Cisco WS-C2960-8TC-L.

The 12-port fanless Gigabit switch we want to recommend is Juniper EX2200-C12T-2G. It is a fanless Gigabit switch with 12 10/100/100BASE-T ports and 2 combo Gigabit SFP/RJ45 uplink ports. It is in standard 1RU package and the maximum power consumption is 30 W. In addition to all the layer 2 features, it also provides static routing.

Conclusion

Fanless Gigabit switch 24-port or less is best for use in environments that require low noise and Gigabit speed. And fanless Gigabit switch managed is a wise choice for users because it provides beneficial traffic control and network management ability.

Source: http://www.fiber-optic-transceiver-module.com/recommendations-on-managed-fanless-gigabit-switch-24-port-or-less.html