ProCurve announces new switch families

HP's ProCurve Networking group is looking to draw corporate customers into buying ProCurve access gear with three low-price switch families that directly compete against models made by other vendors.

The ProCurve Switch 1800, 2810 and 2510 go one-on-one with switches made by 3Com, Cisco, D-Link, Netgear and Nortel by offering a range of features, taking up less space, running cool and costing less.

They follow ProCurve's strategy of providing reliable, low-cost switches tailored for specific types of businesses, according to Katie Trippet, an analyst with Synergy Research.

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HP's ProCurve Networking group is looking to draw corporate customers into buying ProCurve access gear with three low-price switch families that directly compete against models made by other vendors.

The ProCurve Switch 1800, 2810 and 2510 go one-on-one with switches made by 3Com, Cisco, D-Link, Netgear and Nortel by offering a range of features, taking up less space, running cool and costing less.

They follow ProCurve's strategy of providing reliable, low-cost switches tailored for specific types of businesses, according to Katie Trippet, an analyst with Synergy Research.

The ProCurve Switch 1800 is well suited for a small business with little or no IT staff, she says, while the 2810 is aimed at larger, more sophisticated businesses with its management, Gigabit support and as many as 48 ports.

Trippet says the new Layer 2 switches fit the needs of businesses that don't want Layer 3 and 4 security features but might want a managed switch with Gigabit uplinks at a lower price.

For instance, Jerry Luedtke, IS director at Lakeside-Milam Recovery Centers in Kirkland, Wash., is buying 22 of the ProCurve Switch 1800-8G switches at $209 each vs. Cisco 2940s that cost $729.

Luedtke says he uses the switches in offices that have a single Ethernet connection but multiple VoIP phones, PCs and printers. "I Velcro one of these under a desk and shoot cables out to the other devices," he says. Users don't know the switches are there because they are hidden and don't have fans to make noise.

The ProCurve switches are an upgrade from the unmanaged Linksys switches that Luedtke had been using. He prefers the ProCurves because they are manageable from a Web interface and support virtual LANs (VLAN). He says he sets up separate VLANs for the IP phones, printers, PCs and wireless access points, all of which might be deployed in an office with a single wired network connection. With the Linksys switches, all the devices attached to them had to belong to a single VLAN.

While he prefers command line interfaces for management, Luedtke says he finds the Web interface easy to use by following the documentation that comes with the switches. The ProCurve Switch 1800 is the first ProCurve switch with the Web interface, the company says.

This differs from fully managed ProCurve switches in that the Web-managed switches have no command line interface or console port, and they support a shorter list of configurable features.

Luedtke says there may be a tradeoff with lower performance vs. competitors' gear, but it is not significant for his purposes. "You might need another 3,000 milliseconds faster throughput for [some] applications, but big deal. I don't need that for my medical applications," Luedtke says.

The ProCurve Switch 1800 comes in two models, 1800-8G and 1800-24G. The 1800-24G has 24 10/100 ports, two of which can be configured to support 1Gbps fiber uplinks via use of Gigabit interface converters that cost $419 for 1000Base-SX, $899 for LX and $5,699 for LH appliances.