The Allied Telesyn Rapier 48 is designed for companies with an eye to applications such as VoIP and streaming video. The Layer 3 switch carries a list price of $4,695 (about $98 per port), but it has a smaller 24-port sibling with a $2,995 price. The design of the products in the Rapier family facilitates making all connections on the front of the devices, which can make a big difference in crowded racks. All of the products have expansion ports for Gigabit Ethernet and connections for redundant power supplies.

Like the Foundry FastIron 4802, the Rapier offers 48 connections in a 1.5U device, so you can build compact wiring closets for large workgroups. Also like the FastIron, this product is really a router that can handle AppleTalk, IPX, IP, and other protocols.

You can add firewall software to the Rapier, so it would do triple duty in a remote or branch office. Optional encryption and compression acceleration hardware can help scale to heavier loads for specific applications. The switch includes a full menu of Layer 2 features, including prioritization of data and flexible VLAN. Though we were more impressed with the FastIron, the Rapier 48 performed adequately on all our tests.