Hey everyone,
So, I was doing some last-minute Christmas shopping and thought I scored a deal on a Nintendo Switch for my nephew. Turns out, I didn’t read the description carefully enough, and I ended up with a NETGEAR 16-Port Gigabit Ethernet Managed Switch.
To be fair, it does look like a futuristic game console.
After some initial panic, I’ve decided to just keep it. Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll pivot into the hotel business and need to save on network infrastructure costs. Gotta think long-term, right?
I guess your nephew can start studying to become a network engineer now lol
In all seriousness, a 16 port managed switch exposes enough complexity to develop a detailed understanding of Ethernet and Layer 2 concepts, while not having to commit to learning illogical CLI commands to achieve basic functionality. 16 ports is also enough to wire up a non-trivial network, with ports to spare for exercising loop detection/protection or STP, but doesn’t consume a lot of electricity.
I would pair that switch with a copy of The All-New Switch Book, 2nd Edition to go over the networking theory. Yes, that book is a bit dated but networking fundamentals have not changed that much in 15 years. Plus, it can be found cheap, or on the high seas. It’s certainly not something to read cover-to-cover, since you can skip anything about ATM networks.
Then again, I think students might just simulate switch behaviors and topologies in something like GNS3, so no hardware needed at all.
Thanks for the GNS3 link, I had just been looking for something like that.
So much networking is straight up virtualized these days anyway.