Cisco are well known to be one of the market leaders when it comes to networking but a lot of small businesses and personal users overlook them because they are seen to be too expensive or too complicated which is not always the case.

They do actually offer basic gigabit switches that you can use in the home or a very small business such as the Cisco 8 Port Small Business Gigabit Switch (Cisco SD2008) which you can simply plug and play with while offering great features such as cable detection (now you don’t need to worry if the cable is a crossover cable or a standard cat5) as well as each of the 8 ports automatically detecting the speed of the device plugged into it so it knows whether to work in half or full duplex mode to ensure the best performance possible for your network.

Cisco 3750G 12 Port Gigabit Switch WS C3750G 12S S

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Cisco Catalyst 3750G Gigabit Switch WS C3750G 24T S

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If you are looking for a mid range 24 port Cisco gigabit switch then you should really look into the Cisco Compact SR2024 as this can be picked up at a great price for the features it has, as well as just having the Cisco name. Again, this switch does not need you to do anything complicated when you first set this up as you just take it out of the box and mount it into your rack and simply the existing network cables in and voila, you have a gigabit speed network which drastically reduces the time needed for business jobs like backups, file transfer and video streaming.

Cisco Linksys SR2024 24 Port 10 100 1000 Gigabit Switch

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Cisco SR2024 24 Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch

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If you are looking for a reasonably priced top end switch then the Cisco SRW2016 may be ideal for your circumstances. It can be used as a basic unmanaged gigabit switch but as well as this it has the Cisco Webview interface which allows intermediate to advanced configuration options.

As well as drastically improving transfer speeds, ping rates and data storage, the basic QoS helps ensure a consistent networking experience for network applications like Voice Over IP (VoIP). Many businesses are starting to make the move over to VoIP to cut costs during the recession.

In unmanaged networks using a basic gigabit switch such as the Cisco 8 Port Small Business Gigabit Switch you will find that during busy network periods such as antivirus updates or backups the burst of data will interfere with the quality of the telephone call. As the Cisco SRW2016 is managed you can prioritise the voice ports to give this more importance than data to ensure you have reliably clear voice communication.

Another key selling point with the Cisco SRW2016 is the 802.1x port authentication that is available. This means you can secure any network port until the client has authenticated themselves so it prevents people from simply plugging into your network and being able to access things they shouldn’t.

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