Five-or eight-port unmanaged switches have their place in small-business networking, but even small businesses eventually get to a point where their networking needs expand. Voice over IP, multicast streaming, a network segmented by VLANs, or a fast backbone for server-to-server or server-to-SAN communication—any of these are catalysts for kicking your network technology up a notch. And for applications like these, a switch like the 24-port D-Link xStack DGS-3627 is what you're looking for.

At over three grand, the DGS-3627 isn't something you'll casually pick up at Staples, but then, it isn't meant to be. Sporting 24 Gigabit Ethernet ports and another four small-form-factor pluggable (SFP) ports capable of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) uplinks, this switch can find a home as part of a large enterprise's switch fabric. Yet with its slim 1U form factor, it can just as easily become a backbone all by itself for a smaller business. Rabbit-ear hardware lets you rack-mount the unit, but it operates so quietly that you can deploy it in a work area—a trait I find especially small-business friendly.

A black frame surrounds the silver front bezel, which contains all 28 ports, each of which have LEDs for link status, speed, and activity. The front panel also has indicators for power, console activity, and redundant power supply (RPS). A female DB-9 console port lets you talk to the switch using a plain old serial cable, but you'll more likely communicate using telnet or the included Web-management interface.

The rear of the DGS-3627 has a power plug, as well as three slots for adding optional 10GbE modules. These ports do more than just pump 10-gigabit packets. D-Link has added a proprietary stacking technology common to all switches in the xStack line. Called Single IP Management, this feature lets you stack any devices in this line and manage them with a single IP address—a feat that lets smaller businesses create larger switches simply by adding more, smaller switches.

This may seem like any other daisy-chain implementation, but xStack goes a couple steps further, first by using those SFP ports and a proprietary hookup to pump stack traffic at up to 20 gigabits per second, and, second, by allowing any switch in the stack to be hot-swapped in case of trouble. That's a way-cool feature, since it lets an administrator pull a switch out of the stack, replace it with any other D-Link xStack switch (preferably the same model, though it can be a different model as long as the ports and configuration abilities match) and the new unit will jump right in. You don't even need to reconfigure the new device because it grabs its configuration based on the stack number assigned to the old switch. There is a scaling issue, though—eventually, you'll need to move to a large-switch chassis anyway. But for fast-growing companies, this product line gives you a practical way of letting the network keep up with business demands without constantly replacing the entire infrastructure.

The DGS-3626 command-line interface is somewhat similar to Cisco's IOS in syntax, but it has enough proprietary commands that you'll need to spend a fair amount of time becoming proficient with it long term. For this reason, I stuck with the Web-based console during testing. It's easier than the command line, but it's something of a no-frills interface and definitely expects a certain amount of networking knowledge. Still, a network-savvy IT generalist shouldn't have too much trouble.

And darned if the DGS-3627 isn't feature-rich. For VoIP and multicast users, the system supports traffic prioritization at layers 2, 3, and 4 using 802.1Q, IGMP Snooping, Rapid Spanning Tree and Multiple Spanning Tree groups, and more. It's also a capable routing switch, handling floating static routes, RIP, OSPF, and VRRP. Internal network load-balancing, a really neat feature, balances traffic using IP addresses and per-stream throttle controls. This is one of the cooler aspects of the Web interface, though I'd hate to have to use it under the command line. Finally, if your business needs to be ready for Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) , the DGS-3627 has you covered there as well, providing not just support for IPv6 but actually documenting the migration path to help you with the conversion.

Folks worried about security will like this device, too. They'll find multilayer access control lists and authentication support for 802.1x as well as MAC addresses. The system can even bind IP addresses to specific MAC addresses—an effective way to ensure that only authorized hardware gets onto your network, though the procedure is certainly a management headache. If you've got a RADIUS or TACACS+ authentication server on your network, the DGS-3627 lets users authenticate to the security server. Finally, there's a very neat CPU Safeguard Engine that protects the DGS-3627 from malicious attacks like broadcast, multicast, or unicast traffic floods—the stuff of which denial-of-service attacks are made.

While latency and jitter are concerns for larger networks sending voice or multicast video, small businesses running Gigabit Ethernet to the desktop typically have big-enough pipes. For that reason, in performance testing, I simply verified that the DGS-3627 could really run at gigabit speeds. I attached a Fluke EtherScope Series Two network tester on one port and a Fluke LinkRunner Pro Network MultiMeter to another, then ran a connection-speed test across the link. The Flukes verified the D-Link's ability to run 1,000 Mbps in regular operation and very close to 2,000-Mbps in full duplex mode. The switch delivered as advertised.

Very small businesses will need a network consultant to make full use of a switching product with capabilities as deep as the DGS-3627's, but today's network applications can greatly benefit from these features. An unmanaged switch might be fine for straight data traffic, but voice traffic, videoconferencing for telecommuters and road warriors, multicast video for customer Web training videos, and even heightened security concerns are all reasons to look beyond the Best Buy special and start paying attention to your network configuration. If your business is at this stage, the DGS-3627 is a perfect place to start.

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