Cisco Cataylst

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Introduction

Networking is important in any homelab and this article is going to look at Cisco Catalyst switches and the basics of IOS networking.

Pros and Cons

There are a lot of available models on eBay fairly inexpensive, from $50 to $500. For example, I got a WS-C2960S-48LPS-L for less than $150 on eBay. This is a 48 port gigabit PoE+ switch with 4 SFP ports. Another thing to keep in mind is that Cisco gear requires a contract in order to download IOS. You can obtain IOS, but you have to look for it. There's also no management plane for Catalyst gear. It's the good old fashioned CLI. Depending on your views, this is either a pro or a con - for me, it's a pro ;)