Gigabit Switch... question..

[Nyper]

Our company currently has about 15 different servers, all with gigabit ethernet cards. Our router is a Cisco 2600 Series, and our firewall is a SonicWall Pro 300. We currently have an older 10/100 switch connectiong all of our servers, basically like this:

Router -> Firweall -> Switch -> Servers

We plan to replace the older switch with a new Gigabit switch (all 24 ports are 10/100/1000). Basically, we want our servers to be able to communicate with EACH OTHER over a gigabit connection instead of 10/100 (for speeding up backups, data replication, etc).

Will the 10/100 connection coming from the firewall cause a problem with this?

 

[mikesgroovin]

No, you will be just fine.
If you have about $500 to spend, might I recommend the Linksys SRW2024. $500 will get the switch and a good 2-year warranty in most stores that sell the product. Personally, the love this switch, extremely easy to configure and works flawlessly. I've set up 3 of these in different locations and have never had to reset them. Which is, more than I can say for some other brands.
The only downfall is that the switch is pretty loud. Probably the loudest 24-managed that I've ever heard. Luckily, 1000 miles away, and through a web intereface, I can't hear a thing Music to my ears.

 

[Ethereal_Dragon]

Yes and no.....

If you aren't planning on having multiple VLAN's it should work fine, otherwise, you will have to utilize trunking in the switch, and connect it to the router, otherwise you won't have inter-VLAN communication.

ALSO, all of the servers will have to be in the same subnet in order to get the 1000 Kbps to work... otherwise, the data will have to go to the router (through the 10/100 firewall) and back to the switch to the correct host or server...

Lastly, if you are going to invest in a 10/100/1000 switch, be sure to look at how much traffic the backplain will handle. Not all switches have a hefty enough backplain to support the full 1000 to each port at the same time.