[schalliol]

I'm looking for a couple of Gigabit switches, but here's what I'm looking for since cost of these suckers is fairly high:

1. Gigabit on at least one port (could be copper or optical) and copper 10/100 on the rest of the ports (Would need at least 8 of those, and I could go out via crossover to a 10/100 to 10/100 switch for some low-speed connections if needed). This has to go in a wiring cabinet, so it can't be very big either....though I do want it to work and be of decent quality!!

2. A switch with gigabit to match the media from #1 plus at least 2 copper gigabit ports and at least one additional port I could use for the other switches at 10/100 - or could have something like 10 ports of 10/100 to avoid networking out from that. Size not an issue.

Like most MacNN readers, cost unfortunately is a factor, so cheapest possible that meets this would be great (tall order!). I just haven't surveyed the network hardware recently and am not sure what's available.

Thanks!

[ghporter]

Take a look at this forum back a few weeks; I did a little research in answering another post and found some surprisingly affordable gigabit switches/routers. These are pretty much the gigabit version of cable/DSL routers, but the important part is that they are not incredibly expensive (less than $100), and they offer lots of flexibility while conecting gigabit capable computers.

If I could remember much more than it was a few weeks ago and that I was talking about gigabit switches, I'd point you right to it...