[Gllug] Quiet/Silent rackmount switch recommendation?

[Chris Bell]

On Tue 22 Jun, Nix wrote:
> 

> 
> 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 may be completely wrong, but I thought that cheaper switches connect
all routes via a store-and-forward system that cuts collisions, with single
100M and/or a 10M buses. Larger and more expensive switches were likely to
have multiple buses to allow multiple concurrent connections. The greater
the number of possible connections the greater the complexity and risk of
overheating. Place that in a poorly ventilated rack and watch the
temparature.
   I worked with mobile equipment, with racks fitted with large fans above
and below, filled with equipment which came in all sorts of shapes and
sizes, some completely filling the rack from front to back. Some of the
off-the-shelf equipment is carefully designed to allow air to pass
vertically through the stack, but this is often totally blocked by units
above and below with either horizontal or zero ventilation. One stack of
distribution amplifiers used to get hot enough to burn fingers on the front
panel. Even that was bad enough, but then try parking several vehicles side
by side in a confined space where the aircon units in one vehicle received
the hot air expelled by the next one.

-- 
Chris Bell

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