( 2 reviews )
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( 1 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: Mar 4 2006
A client of mine has 15 Netgear GSM7324's. Within a 10 month period, I needed to RMA 6 of the units. The biggest issue with these switches is that they "freeze." All the lights maybe stuck on, and the switch itself becomes unresponsive. At this point, the switch may or may not reboot on its own. If you reboot it manually, by pulling the power, the status light will blink [as if it is booting]. However, the switch never boots. If a console cable is attached to the switch as the reboot happens, it will show that there is an "unknown PCI Device," and then name the product number of the Motorola board. It will also say "unknown box topology," then go into a reboot-loop. I have tried reloading the firmware on the switch, and this does not fix the issue. I have noticed that half of the switches that break have been configured with VLANs, but the other half are just "wide open" switches, with only the IP address / gateway assigned. Tech support used to be really good. Decision One was handling the higher level support. However, now all the tech support is handled overseas in India. The technicians are nice, but not as capable as Decision One was. The switch itself performs pretty well, but I would not recommend using it in an environment where network stability is important.
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( 4 of 4 found this review helpful ) Posted: Feb 1 2006
I used to hate network uptime. When the LAN was up for more than a few days at a time, I would get angry and punchy. That has all changed, friends. Now that I have the Netgear GSM7324, I don't have to worry about the network being up for too long; it automatically kills the LAN on it's own. The best part is, it is totally unpredictable, so each time my users yell "Hey, I can't get to wiki" or "Is there something wrong with the Internet?", it's like a special surprise for everybody. I mean really, do you really _need_ access to your gateway while trying to commit CVS at the end of the day? And who wants to be able to read email while at work? It's much better to pay a bunch of software engineers and marketing consultants to sit idle while the IT guy is power cycling all the switches on the network trying to clear up whatever happy fun issue is taking down LAGs and VLANs one by one. Sure, I could have bought a Cisco, but that drab bluegreygreen color totally clashes with my server room. Also, there is my hatred of a stable network to consider. I'm sure if I was just using this switch to do simple layer 2 stuff my LAN would stay up longer, but since I wanted to actually break the network as fast as ARP'ingly possible, I made sure to turn on some of the features Netgear claims this box can support. I would have given this unit a higher rating, but sometimes my network is up for nearly half a week before it dies. That's nearly two and one half days without my users sitting idle while I troubleshoot, or going home early because they can't get anything done at work. One last advantage of using this Netgear "layer 3 switch" is their superb support team. I used to have to sit on the phone with other company's support staff, getting answers to my questions, or offers to VPN in to take a look at the situation. Now, I am all smiles as I get the same exact say statement each time I call support. I don't have to worry anymore about getting help with the problem from a qualified network engineer type. Could you pass the Dosas?
