Last year, I wrote a review for the HP 2424M 24-port switch. It's a fantastic switch, and guess what -- it's still running strong and powering a farm of servers at a co-location facility. Knock on wood -- it has never given us a problem.. until the the other week when we migrated to a new facility, added more servers and Ethernet adapters, and ran out of ports. My first impulse was to pick up another 2424M and buy a gigabit stacking kit -- but there was this new one called the 2524 that caught my eye.

The 2524 -- 1U. 1U? Fantastic, I thought -- because we're paying about one grand per full rack at co-location facilities. For those of you that don't use rack-mounted equipment -- it's about 1.8 inches tall. It comes with the rack hardware to mount it properly (19 inch rack).

It has 24 ports, just like my 2424. All 24 ports are 10/100 RJ-45s, and are Auto-MDIX -- that means goodbye crossover cables. Yes, this switch can automatically detect the need to crossover signals so that you don't have to swim through your closet of cables to find a crossover. There are also two open tranceiver slots for Gigabit or 100Base-FX.

Okay -- this is real deal switch. Some people wonder, 'Why pay $800 to $1100 for a 24-port switch, when I can buy X or Y brand for $150?'. I'll tell you why -- because they're not HP. Web manageable. Telnet manageable. Both IP security configurable. SNMP manageable. Real time counters (count bytes transmitted, received) on a per port basis. Real time graphs of bandwidth utilization on a per port basis. Logs and alerts, so if something weird happens, such as a loss of multiple devices on a port -- it keeps a log that you can view online. Multicast Filtering (IGMP) so that you direct multicast packets only to those portions of the network where they are needed, improving network performance. VLANs (virtual LANs) where you can configure your switch to identify multiple LANs on a per port basis, helping increase performance and security.

I thought the same way in the past -- picking up these 16 and 24 port switches for less than $200. After the company picked up a 2424M last year, we never turned back. This 2524 is just like the 2424M, but faster. It has a 9.6 Gbps fabric, which means that it can handle up to 9.6 Gbps of internal traffic.

The reason that we need such a high-speed high-performance switch is because we have a lot of internal server communication. NAS units, database servers, web clusters, etc. Without such a switch, our network would come to a stand-still. Trust me -- when you try out this switch, you'll be so incredbily impressed you also will not turn back to the lower rung of equipment.

My favorite thing about these HP switches is the fact that you can do trunking. Instead of spending the $300 or $400+ on a Gigabit stacking kit, I decided to use trunking. I took four ports from the 2524 and patched them straight through to four ports on the 2424M. In just a few minutes of configuring, I instructed the switches to trunk all four ports into a single trunk -- giving a 400 Mbps link between the switches. It actually load balances inter-switch communication -- beautiful, eh?

Check out the manual at ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/networking/software/59692354.pdf or the technical specifications at http://www.hp.com/rnd/products/switches/switch2524-2512/specs.htm.

Don't be fooled. This is a plug-and-play switch -- all of the frills and exciting and power features are just optional. You can plug this thing in and instantly have your network going, but c'mon, with all of the useful features and easy interface, who wouldn't want to toodle around? Bottom line -- if you're serious about your 10/100 network -- pick up an HP 2524.

Recommended: Yes