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Low Cost Managed Switch

I have a small network which services get extremely slow at certain times and I have not been able to find the real cause of it, I was wondering if anyone here could recommend a nice managed switch with traffic load monitoring capabilities that won't cost an arm and a leg.
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Aaron Tomosky
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I'd suggest the Cisco sg line. The 300 if you don't need stacking and the 500 if you do. The free version of prtg with snmp monitoring will give you some pretty good metrics.
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jdff

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Hi Aron,
Thank for your advise, however I have no experience on setting up cisco equipment, i would prefer something with a web interface if you have a similar recommendation.
The Cisco sg line is the small business line and it has a web interface as well as CLI.
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So you think I can get an overview of network traffic just by the Managment console, or do I still have to use PRTG?
You can get statistics from the web interface, but separate snmp software will graph over time. Prtg is much easier to setup IMO vs cacti or Rmon or even spiceworks.
Also, be careful about "managed" switches as some have a GUI interface but no SNMP.  I believe the Cisco SG200 series is like that....
Cisco might be low-cost (made from cheap parts)
You can buy first hand managed switches from D-LINK or NetGear or LinkSys.
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Aaron Tomosky
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Approx $200 D-Link is cheaper than replacing 'backplane' or 'line card'
Hello

If you want the best product to use and you have no experience working with network devices.
Meraki MS line is what you are looking for.

All port monitoring, traffic, users etc.  Get a 30 day eval, its really easy.
You can also use their Firewall, Access points and phones all together.

Its the best way for your solution going forward.  Anything else you will have to piece meal together and maybe still will not get what you want.

Thanks
HP 18xx G series are rather cheap but do work quite well.
And do have SNMP.
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Steve,
I agree with you, Meraki is a great piece of equipment that allows me time to have a margarita under the shade, but it comes with a higher cost, which is no plausible for the SBS.
Meraki is higher cost yes but really good webinterface. but personally i dont like Cisco SG series. but if you need a Webinterface to configure with you should use SG switches.

personaly i whould take a 2960-x or something and learn some commands.
Not hard to enable snmp on a cisco switch.
I didn't say it earlier but I'm using the Cisco SG300 line of switches exclusively for this purpose.
There is nothing complicated or mysterious in setting them up.
Of course, they will "just work" out of the box as if they had no features.
You can add management capabilities at your leisure.
You can avoid more complex capabilities entirely.

Of course these switches aren't as inexpensive as smart/unmanaged switches but they fit the need for "low cost" to me!
There is shortage of information what sort of SMART is needed:
MDI-X
SNMP
Routing
VLANs
QoS
Web control panel
Syslog
Netflow
WCCP
....
...
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Aaron, the Cisco switch was definitely a good solution for the price.
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Good switch.