Here’s some notes on the HP Procurve J9028A 1800-24G gigabit switch. I use a few in a data center.
They are managed via a web interface, not telnet or ssh.
If you look at the changelog, some serious bugfixes have been released regarding usability and features, so it’s important to update the firmware.
J9028A Pluses:
- 24x 10/100/1000 switch ports, 2 of them dual-personality mini-GBIC slots. Each port has several duplex settings.
- Jumbo frame support up to 9216 bytes, but switch-wide, not per port (Cisco IOS is much worse, though. See link below.)
- supports 64 VLANs numbered up to 4096, with 1 reserved for mgmt. The documentation recommends just using VLAN 1, which is a security hazard in the networking world. The web UI does a good job of preventing the user from disabling ports because of misconfiguration in the current firmware revision, but don’t assign the port you connected in with to a different default VLAN than 1, or you will be denied mgmt. access on that port.
- read-only SNMP (haven’t figured out if the counters are 64-bit yet)
- lots of protocols supported, including LACP, priority, flow control, etc.
- good performance specs – 1000 Mb Latency <3.0 µs (64-byte packets) and 48Gbps, compared to much worse performance of consumer gear like Linksys and Netgear.
- web UI in current firmware is very nice, showing a detailed graphical model of the switch, and fairly useful help dialogs. Comparable to Netgear GS108T feature-set overall, which is a compliment.
- modest power consumption – about .50 amps at 110 volts to boot, .25 amps when idle according to my KilloWatt. The manual lists a max of 0.4/0.8. Light and compact at 1U. Could prolly run fanless – the manual says it is, but something is generating a buzzing noise and there’s a fan cutout in the case
- relatively quiet – makes a slight buzzing sound and could prolly use in office environment, but not at home outside of a closet.
- recently discontinued by HP, so available for cheap ~$150 each. Originally came with free rack-mounting ears.
J9028A Minuses:
- weird front-panel link and activity status LEDs that have a modal switch, looks like it was originally designed for 10/100-only switches. Need to break out the manual every time I look at it.
- read-only SNMP
- no dedicated reset switch, a full reset requires connecting Ports 1 and 2 and cycling the power, which makes remote mgmt. more difficult
- only 1 power supply and 1 power cord
- no per port Jumbo Frame settings, so less useful in data center VLAN situations. (Need to buy separate switches for Internet and LAN if you want to use Jumbo Frames on LAN.)
- rack-mountable, but feels consumerish overall. Nice silk screen case artwork, though.
- sample switch configurations on HP site don’t apply to this switch, just more advanced models.
Overall, it’s a nice switch if you can live with a web UI and single power supply.
Some configuration notes:
- to connect multiple switches, a regular straight-through cable can be used, but configure the uplink ports as “tagged, VLAN None.” That works for me with all ports on VLAN1.
- I wanted to use VLAN1 for mgmt. ports and VLAN2 for other ports for security reasons, but I can’t seem to ping across all switches that way. So for now all ports are on VLAN1, which is what the manual and online help suggest. I’ll have to try VLAN configuration again later.
HP Procurve 1800-series FAQ
cisco.com: Jumbo/Giant Frame Support on Catalyst Switches Configuration Example (only 6000 and up support jumbo frames per port)
