Wow, I got more responses than I thought. I tend to agree with the majority of the opinions. I tested a 3048,3348 and 6024 in our lab. We will be creating about 12 VLANS total. While that isn't a lot per say, the 3048 couldn't handle more than one VLAN on it. The 3348 let us add several vlan's but then I couldn't trunk them together.. The 6024 we really didn't experience any problems with so far. But, I don't want some of the switches to work correctly some of the time. I am going to make my stand against buying these for our network and try to pitch Cisco for L3 stuff and RiverStone for L2 stuff. I know some people don't like RiverStone, but I have several years of experience with them at my previous place of employment. I agree that for L3 they aren't worth it, but for L2 I never had any issues. Well... worms love to melt RiverStones, but that is another story. Another thing that bugs me is that the existing Dell switches have had ports go bad on them. At least with the RiverStones I can replace the Ethernet cards. With the Dell's I have to replace the whole switch. Thanks again to everyone! ------------------------------------- Joel Perez | Network Engineer jperez@uspgi.com | www.USPGI.com ------------------------------------- -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Joel Perez Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2004 4:11 PM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Dell power connect switches. Good afternoon, We are planning to deploy several Dell PowerConnect 3324, 3348 and 6024 switches on our network. We currently have between 200-300 users and servers that these switches will service. We are also planning to add about 300-400 more users in the next 2-3 mos. 85% of the users are for our call center where they all use Terminal clients and connect to W2K TS. The rest is regular staff and our application servers. Can anyone tell me any good/bad points about them? I originally proposed using RiverStone as L2 switches but price was a factor in our decision to go with Dell. That is my main concern at this point. The Dell switches are very cheap compared to other L2 switches out there. Will this be a case of "you get what you pay for" or are they really good performing units? I really have not been able to find any lists or other sources with comments on these units. I'd appreciate any info you guys might have. Regards, ------------------------------------- Joel Perez | Network Engineer jperez@uspgi.com | www.USPGI.com -------------------------------------