Over the past few years I have received multiple requests for temporary computer labs in conference rooms. Sometimes I receive a request for a switch to be placed in a conference room for a major systems change and the requester want all of the support staff to be in the same room hardwired specific subnet. An IP phone is always on the request.

I usually struggle to find an extra POE switch that is available, I usually find a 48 port Cisco 3560. Then I place it on top of the conference table so all of the computers can easily reach it. Sometimes I am stuck with a Cisco 2950, no POE, then struggle to find a power brick for the IP Phone and have to make a crossover cable for the uplink.

I was excited to hear about the Compact Switches that do not have fans. I started looking at different vendors with compact switches. I wanted to get a 10/100/1000 switch with 10-12 ports. Out of the compact switches that I looked at, the Brocade ICX-6430-12C was the only one I found with 12 ports of gigabit ethernet. I have used Brocade FastIrons and NetIrons in the data center so I took a close look at the ICX-6430-C12.

Here are the requirements I had for my compact switch to fulfill this need.

– 10 to 12 Gigabit ports

– Fully Managed, SSH, SNMP etc..

– Layer 2 only, Just pass the VLANs through

– Mark QOS via ACL (Mark DSCP Value), Trust DSCP on the uplink

– Provide PoE (for an IP phone and maybe an Access Point)

– No fan, low to no noise

– SFP port (a like to have)

The ICX-6430-C12 has 12 10/100/1000 ports with two Gigabit uplink ports and 2 available SFP ports. Brocade states it is a 12 port switch, but it is really a 16 port switch. The switch can power up to 4 802.3AF devices OR 2 802.3AT devices and 2 802.3AF devices. The switch doesn’t make any noise, no humm or Buzz. The configuration is very simple. TACACS+ works with my Cisco ACS server for authentication.

The switch has a few different mounting kits available. There is a 19 inch rack mount kit, rubber feet and my favorite, the magnet. You can read more about them in the FastIron_08001_ICX6430-C_InstallGuide. I was surprised to see the magnet mounting kit. It would work great if there was a steel wall close. It’s easy to use and no tools are needed to mount it to the wall. Unfortunately, very few of the locations I would use this have steel walls to mount it on.

I was easily able to power my 6900 and 7900 Series Cisco IP Phones with this swtich. I was able to power a Cisco 1252 and 3500 series wireless access points. The Cisco 1252 access point requires PoE+.

QOS marking and queuing worked well. I had very good voice quality while the switch was under heavy load.

Overall, I’m very happy with this product and I do highly recommend the switch to you. The gigabit port density for the cost was a very good value for me.

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