Network switches facilitate easier network expansion

A new four-model family of stackable Netgear Gigabit switches has been released by Duxbury Networking. Targeted at growing small and medium size businesses, the Netgear ProSafe range is designed to deliver flexibility and scalability, allowing for easier network expansion and non-interruptive addition of new applications.

Consisting of four models covering a range of 28- to 52-port configurations, each Netgear Stackable Smart Switch features a Power over Ethernet (PoE) option and six SFP (small form-factor pluggable) ports for fibre connectivity. Among them, two are shared, and the other four are dedicated for either stacking or uplinks.

“The stacking function offers a 10 Gigabit-per-second, dual-ring, highly redundant stacking bus that carries intra-stack traffic and provides the highest level of resilience,” says Armand Steffens, business development manager at Duxbury Networking. “This allows users to stack up to six switches or up to three hundred 10/100/1000 Megabits-per-second ports, forming a virtual chassis for easy management under a single IP address.

“This stacking technology also ensures more robust security, higher quality of service and high availability. For example, resiliency is assured because the redundant stacking port connections allow for an automatic fail-over in case any switch in the stack fails. Rapid reconfiguration prevents network downtime,” he says.

“Additionally, all switches in the stack are hot-swappable, and can be integrated or removed without disrupting the network.”

Other features of the Netgear Stackable Smart Switch family include access control lists (ACL), static routing, rate limiting, Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) snooping, and dynamic VLAN assignment.

“Friendly to converged networks with voice and video, the new switches automatically configure QoS [Quality of Service], security and VLAN settings for IP [Internet Protocol] phones and cameras,” adds Steffens.

In order to accommodate the move by Internet service providers to IPv6 addresses, the Netgear switches expand IPv6 support beyond management to QoS, ACL and multicasting, thus future-proofing the network.

There are various ways to manage the switches; either with Netgear’s Smart Control Centre software (supplied free with the switch) or, if there are other Netgear business products in the network, Netgear’s management platform – NMS200 – can be deployed.