Hi, As a posted in another thread, I am having network performance issues that I think can be corrected by a better performing switch. The switch must be able to run efficiently at 100/Full Duplex. Every switch/hub & NIC combo I have owned up to this point either didnt work @100/full or was flakey at best. Currently my 3com 3c905b-TX NICs in combination with a Netgear DS-108 8-port switch maxes out at an average 0.03% network utilization while transferring large files at 100/Full Duplex. Takes about 25min to transfer a 600mb file. I was going to purchase a Cisco 10/100 Microswitch for about $300 off ebay, but I dont need the VLANs, so it may be an overkill. Any recommendations or a link to a switch review would be greatly appreciated. Jason

99% of all switchs have VLAN capability, you don't have to use it.

99% of ENTERPRISE level switches have VLAN NOT SOHO switches! That's just one of the differences between an Enterprise level switch and a SOHO switch. Another is performance. Enterprise level switches (3Com, Cisco, Extreme, stuff you don't buy at Best Buy) are generally designed with what's called NON-BLOCKING Backplanes. That is to say if you buy a 16 port 100 Mbs Switch, the backplane of the switch will be able to support at a minimum 1600 Mbs of data at a time, meaning that you can have all ports at full capacity and not overload the backplane. Your SOHOs generally dont have non-blocking, so you can overload the backplane and create a choke hold in data transfer. Cisco is good stuff, should be good, though that price sounds awful low (course there are a lot of .com firesales these days), but remeber, you get what you pay for. D

The only way to nail down 100/full positively and forever is to turn autonegotiation off for that switch port and manually set the speed. That requires a manageable switch which is more $$. Look for "manageable" or "management" in the description.