[Scotttheking]

There's a WS-C2924-XL-EN for sale for $315, which seems very cheap for a 24 port 10/100 switch.
Of course, I don't know much about these switches (but I'll be reading up on cisco's site).

So, I have many questions in order to decide if I want it or not.

First, here's the things that I know that I'd like to do with it, right now and in the near future.
1) Setup 2-3 VLANs on it so that I can use one switch for my networking needs and still have different networks not able to talk to each other.
2) Setup a span port so that I can run NIDS on the network that my servers are on.

Other things I'd like to do that I don't know if it can do (Please tell me if it can )
1) Using SNMP and mrtg, get bandwidth usage stats by port.
2) Bandwidth limit ports (other then forcing 10base half duplex)
3) QoS, both by port on the switch and by networking port (80, 443, etc.) (I doubt it can do this, it's a layer 3 device, right?).

Other things I'd like to know.
Where can I get new IOS versions, legally? How much would it cost? Is it worth it to do it? I do not know what version it would come with, what's the oldest it could come with?
I'm assuming it's fan cooled. How loud is it, subjectively and comparatively?
Is $315 a good price for one of these?
What other cool stuff could I do with it?
Finally, would you all recommend getting this for a home network?

Thanks,

Scott

[Camelot]

This switch runs the full enterprise version of the Cisco IOS, so you can do pretty much anything you want with this switch.

You can run up to 64 VLANs on this switch and any port can be nominated as a mirror port

You can also run SNMP monitoring (MRTG or any other SNMP system)
Bandwidth limiting is also supported, as is QoS.

As for the IOS version, 11.2(8)SA6 is the minimum version you can run (but you'll at least have this on the device).
IOS versions can only be obtained from Cisco, and only with a support contract. You can talk to Cisco sales about this but they traditionally frown upon used equipment and might require a service check on the device before they accept it for a service contract (to make sure it's at least working before they have to support it). This is not likely to be cost effective given the sale price.
It might also not be possible given that this device is EOL'd (End of Life) and is no longer available from Cisco. Their support for older models varies and you might not be able to get a support contract for it if it wasn't covered by one before they EOL'd the model

As for the fan, Cisco devices typically sit in server rooms and datacenters where noise levels are the least of your problems. Consequently I wouldn't expect it to be quiet, but how loud it is depends on your environment.

$315 is a reasonable price for this, assuming it's in working order. However, unless you really need Cisco switches (for example, you're trying to learn IOS), this is overkill for a home network. You can get perfectly usable 24-port switches for a lot less.

[kampl]

Camelot nailed it. That can be done on a 2924, I personally haven't done it on that platform as I deal with 4000 and 6500 series Cats mostly. Code upgrades will be problematic as was mentioned aswell.