[Gllug] Quiet/Silent rackmount switch recommendation?

[Tom Fairbairn]

>Er, why would even large switches make any noise? They're
>low-power-consumotion solid-state devices

Well, yes, all the brains of modern switches are in one or two large ICs.  Think
about, though, it's the same with your Linux box - it generates a lot of heat
and needs fans.  Why?  You've got lots (hundreds of millions) of transistors
switching billions of times a second, trying to move a few GB of data around in
a second.  It's the same with switches - they use very big chips at the same
process node as the processor in your PC.  The analogue chips that interface to
Gigabit ethernet used to run at 5/6W each (per port)!

Of course, it's a lot easier if you only need 10/100.





Nix <nix at esperi.org.uk>@gllug.org.uk on 06/22/2004 05:33:29 PM

Please respond to Greater London Linux Users Group <gllug at gllug.org.uk>

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To:   Greater London Linux Users Group <gllug at gllug.org.uk>
cc:
Subject:  Re: [Gllug] Quiet/Silent rackmount switch recommendation?


On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Doug Winter mused:
> Simon Perry wrote:
>> Does anyone have a recommendation for a quiet, or better still silent, 16 or
24 port 10/100 rackmount switch? I have contacted a
>> couple of manufacturers but they don't seem to have any noise emission data
for their products.
>
> Seems unlikely that such a thing exists to me - rackmount kit is aimed at
lights-out facilities, where noise is not an issue.  If
> you want quiet, you'll probably have to go for a consumer-oriented device.

Er, why would even large switches make any noise? They're
low-power-consumotion solid-state devices: do the huge ones emit enough
heat to need fans or something?

(My fully populated eight-port 100Mb/s switch, with lots of traffic on
all nodes, shows no sign of heating above ambient temperature.)

(I admit myself ignorant about most rackmount kit in its native
environment.)

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