Small layer 3 Switch?

A

Angus

Weaksauce
Joined
Apr 28, 2005
Messages
116
Hello,

I'm looking for a small layer 3 switch to do intervlan routing, or a suggestion for a home router that will handle it i guess. It will need to support trunk ports as it will be going to at least 2 downstream switches which are layer 2 web managed and support vlans.


Lemme know....

Also if i missed anything i would need.. kind of a newb to vlans and what not, but I want to break up my CCTV/Home automation/regular/wifi..


Thanks


The cheaper the better of course :) But hopefully under 500-600 and ideally fanless so no POE or anything required in this switch.
 
It really depend on how much throughput you are going to need.

I have used my ASA5505 recently but I also have a couple of Cisco 1841s I have used in the past. If you are needing gigabit routing though for HD video etc I don't think either of these are good enough.
 
Jay_oasis said:
It really depend on how much throughput you are going to need.

I have used my ASA5505 recently but I also have a couple of Cisco 1841s I have used in the past. If you are needing gigabit routing though for HD video etc I don't think either of these are good enough.
Click to expand...

I think they would work, but there are better options out there.
 
I would want it to be full gigabit speed, i was looking at the UBNT router as well, but i'm unsure what will be better/faster/more stable to do it on a layer 3 switch, or a homeish router.

The network will probably consist of 3 switches, a ProCurve 1800 Dell 2748 and the as yet undetermined layer 3 switch.

I was looking at the 1910's whats the difference between them the 2810's and the 2910 besides the price point?
 
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What kind of routing speed could i expect with pfsense? Id want to virtualize it under esxi 5.0 I'd have to buy a quad port nic, but then i could dedicated 2 nics to it..
 
I have a few ESX boxes so i guess i could really put it on whatever box, they are fairly new, not overly beefy but not bad X3440 and X3460's with 16-32 gigs ram, so i can spare some resources for it if it does what i need..
 
The nice thing about pfSense is you can add it to any switch that supports 802.11q VLAN trunking and add layer 3 capabilities- and a whole lot more. You only need one physical interface; multiple physical interfaces can be added to boost traffic handling. For just routing, you should be able to maintain the rated interface speed without problems. I route 4 LANs and 2 load-balanced WANs on a PE1750 Dual 3.16/2GB and can't get the processor to bump off idle.
 
Could I use it basically just for routing Vlans and still use my internet router for well internet? Or would i have to use pfsense for everything? Only reason would be i can tell my wife how to re-set router if need be.. alot harder to get her to re-set the VM
 
Well, you don't need to reset pfSense every couple of days/weeks like you do with home routers, but yes, what you want is possible. Just take a line off your current home router's LAN port and use it as the WAN interface in pfSense. Make sure you use a different subnet on the pfSense LAN side than what is used on the home router side.
 
My home router hasn't been re-set in months, i dont recall actually ever resetting it.. but just if i happen to be out of town id rather have a simple pull the plug answer rather then something convoluted...

It definately looks intresting, and then i could stick with my current switches, maybe add some more along the way but then I only need layer 2 switches rather then layer 3...

I shall have to see what i can get going. So i would need 2 physical nics in esxi to pull this off right? Like dedicated to this VM alone? And everything else could keep running on existing nics?
 
Never needing to reset a router is simpler than making resetting a router easy, IMO. Like I said, the option is yours. Might be smart to keep the home router up to avoid annoying the wife.

Talking about physical vs. virutal NICs for a virtualized machine is fraught with misunderstanding, so I will try and speak in absolutes...
pfSense 2.x REQUIRES a minimum of one physical interface. pfSense WILL accept 802.1Q tagged trunks, so you can have ALL subnets on one physical interface. The only reason to add physical interfaces would be to add bandwidth. If the sum of traffic on 6 interfaces is less than GbE, then a single GbE card is fine. If most of the traffic is coming over the virtual switch, the bandwidth on that is 10GbE (I think- it is in Hyper-V, less familiar with esx).

So whether you are using a single physical dedicated NIC, or a single virtualized NIC does not make a difference- pfSense just has to see at least one NIC. Any combo of trunked/dedicated interfaces is up to you and your needs.

All of this allows me to add layer3 features to some really accessible hardware, targeting the whole at small business.

I hope I answered your question.
 
I have virtualized pfSense at home using VLAN's, I have four nics on my host that are trunked to the switch and tagged.

On the VM I have two vNic's in a hybrid configuration the WAN nic is not trunked into the VM it is set to a VLAN in ESXi and then the other port is setup to be a tagged trunk.

I have done this so that it is easier to setup and make sure the WAN traffic is separated for the other VLAN's. I could have done this all on one NIC but it was simpler to start with but it could be either way. You could setup different vNic for every VLAN but it would become a pain fast and limit your amount of VLAN's.

This is just one of the many ways of setting it up.
 
Cisco SG300-10. I have the 20 port version and I couldn't be happier for the price, almost line speed inter-vlan routing. But if you have a spare pc or ESX host you can definitely use that as a router on a stick.
 
Yeah.. im thinking i will try the PFsense when i find some time, my one ESX machine has 2 spare nics so i can dedicate those... what i think i will try to do initially at least to test it use the vlans, but keep my wifes computer on the default so it still has my actual internet router as its gateway so that shouldn't go down.. if that makes sense, while other devices will slowly be moved over to their own vlan..

and wireless will be segrated etc... I may still need to pick up anonther switch, i have a dell 2748, but ideally i think id like to end up with all ProCurve stuff... just need to see if i can find a good replacement... Im thinking maybe a 1910 48 port?
 
Or if im running pfsense would a 1810 be fine? Then i could stay fanless? The main issue i have is what would the advantage be to a 1910 vs a 2810 or a 2910 other then my wallet hating me more...
 
I like the 5 series PowerConnects, specifically used 5424/5448 off e-bay, but I've never tried procurves.
 
If you are running PFsense as a router on a stick all you will really need is a L2 switch like a 1810. Unless you are going to start using a lot of the higher end features or really need the inter-vlan speed from a L3 switch.

I have a HP 1800 with PFsense running as a router on a stick and it works great, I just bought a 5324 off ebay for cheep that should be here soon but that is still L2 just with a few more features and more ports.
 
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