Back to the review Interactive buyer's guide

By Ed Mier
Network World, 8/11/97

It may be a little early to say that 100Base-T switches have reached the same commodity status in the marketplace as Ethernet switches, but that day is coming soon.

With the exception of Cisco Systems, Inc. and Cabletron Systems, Inc., all the 100Base-T switches we tested bear price tags of less than $1,000 per port. In fact, except for FORE Systems, Inc.'s ES-3810, priced at $687 per port, all the rest come in at or below $500 per port. By comparison, many Ethernet switches are now priced at or below $100 per port.

Generally, 100Base-T switching, if priced from $250 to $500 per port, provides 10 times the network capacity, speed and bandwidth of switched Ethernet at only 2 1/2 to 5 times switched Ethernet prices.

Note that we calculated price per port as the total price of the switch hardware divided by the number of ports. This fails to factor in the inclusion or quality of a vendor's management applications or the fact that a modular-chassis switch is inherently more expensive than one with a fixed configuration. But these costs are impossible to separate out.

When you factor in performance, you get a measure of each switch's value. In the table below, the last column shows that, on a pure performance-per-dollar basis, Bay Networks, Inc.'s BayStack 350T delivers the most for your money, while high-priced Cisco and Cabletron switches are laggards.

While the numbers on Bay's and Compaq Computer Corp.'s switches are good, their management deficiencies and traffic problems, respectively, prevent us from giving them our top value recommendation. Instead, thanks to its high throughput, reasonable price per port and outstanding features, we're naming HP's AdvanceStack 800T a Best Buy.