Product Reviews

It's been quiet on the SMC front for most of 2005. This large manufacturer hasn't delivered any really significant new network infrastructure products for a while now. The SMC8748M changes all that, as it signals a strong push from SMC into the 10-Gigabit Ethernet market.

You can expect this to be the next big battleground, with falling prices finally making 10-Gigabit more affordable. Low-cost Gigabit Ethernet switches have allowed this technology to be pushed out to the desktop, and the resultant traffic increase makes 10-Gigabit an ideal candidate for enterprise backbone and traffic aggregation duties. You also now have the IEEE 802.3ak ratified standard. This calls for 10-Gigabit over copper connections up to 15m, which is targeted at server-clustering applications.

This new family comprises a 24-port model and the SMC8748M on review, which delivers 48 copper Gigabit ports along with a quartet of SFP (small-form-factor pluggable) ports that accept a range of fibre mini-GBICs. Although these are positioned separately from the main ports, they're dual-personality, so the use of each one will disable the corresponding copper port. A pair of stacking ports allows eight switches to be physically linked via a 10Gb/sec serial backplane. A switch on the front panel is used to select one as the stack master. Power fault tolerance is also a possibility,

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as a separate socket at the back can be used to connect a redundant supply. A large bay alongside the stacking ports accepts SMC's Xenpak module, which currently supports three types of 10-Gigabit uplink transceivers. At £790, it costs only around half as much as HP's equivalent Media Flex module, which is used by the PC Pro Recommended ProCurve Switch 3400cl-24G. However, uplink choice is more limited, as SMC currently has fibre Xenpak transceiver options supporting 300m, 10km and 40km, whereas HP already offers dual-port copper versions.

All remote management is via a web browser, and access can be secured over SSL sessions. Administrative and guest access is controlled with a local user list, or you can use RADIUS or TACACS. The web interface is common to all managed SMC switches and, while not as impressive as that used in HP switches, still provides easy access to all features. A simple switch graphic at the top of all pages provides a quick link to the port configuration screen where you can enable or disable individual ports and manually select their speed. When in a stack, it's possible to swap between different devices, allowing them all to be managed from a single window.

Traffic controls are plentiful. Rate limiting may be applied to specific ports, while ACLs (access control lists), each with up to 32 rules, provide extensive packet filtering. Load balancing and port failover can be implemented using a maximum of 32 trunks comprising up to eight ports per trunk. VLAN support extends to 802.1q, private and protocol based. CoS (class of service) may also be applied to different Layer 2 traffic classes using eight priority queues, and this can be applied to Layer 3/4 traffic as well.

For general switch monitoring and management, SMC will have a hard time beating HP. But the SMC8748M is offering a lot of ports for your money, plenty of traffic controls and a good range of Gigabit and 10-Gigabit uplink options.