Question What is the deal with those dirt cheap Catalyst switches online?!

[Myronazz]

I'm on the search for a switch because I'm tired of unstable power lines. I was looking out for something good and with managable features (not some TP-Link switch that builds itself a L2 address table and that's it) and... I found... not just ONE... but TONS of enterprise Catalyst switches everywhere around the Internet for the absolute bargain price of £25-35.

If one of these cost around this much.

Then why the hell do we have things like this everywhere around ebay?!

And like I said, this stuff are everywhere:

What's the deal here? Did the pandemic cause every company to upgrade their networks so we got an absolute surplus of this stuff in the second hand market? I know these are enterprise class, so they probably got daily heavy usage. Still... I was working with this stuff in my college labs and the teacher would always mention how networking equipment throughout the college would die, but Cisco stuff would last far longer. I remember that they also made jet-engine sounds though, so even if I get this it'd have to be on the loft.

 

[kanewolf]

They are end of life from Cisco's perspective. They are not supported. You can't get firmware updates. They may have security vulnerabilities that enterprise clients won't accept.

 

[Ralston18]

Two thoughts:

1) Some of those cheap switches could be fakes/counterfeit.

2) This:

"I'm on the search for a switch because I'm tired of unstable power lines "

I am missing how new/replacement switches will resolve power line issues?

Are your switches being damaged by power related problems?

Surge protection and/or UPS's would seem to be more applicable.

Unless you are doing that along with replacement switches.

Just curious.....

 

[USAFRet]

Why so cheap?
Those are easily 15 years old.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/suppo...itches/products-installation-guides-list.html

Buy a pallet of corporate or gov castoffs for $200, sell for $25-$50 each.
Profit!

 

[kanewolf]

Why so cheap?
Those are easily 15 years old.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/suppo...itches/products-installation-guides-list.html

Buy a pallet of corporate or gov castoffs for $200, sell for $25-$50 each.
Profit!

I just looked up the end of support (end of life) date for 3750G switches -- January 2018. So they are 3 years past end of support. Best case, you are running firmware with 3 years of security vulnerabilities.

 

[bill001g]

Look very closely at the models you linked. There are a lot of models of 3750. A large part of why those switches are so cheap in addition to the above comments is those only have 10/100 ports. They must have a letter "G" in the part to have gigabit ports.

Nobody uses 10/100 ports anymore. Somewhere I have a link for a brand new switch with 24 gigabit ports and 2 10g SFP ports for $139. Not a cisco but few people will actually use most the feature cisco has.

 

[USAFRet]

Somewhere I have a link for a brand new switch with 24 gigabit ports and 2 10g SFP ports for $139. Not a cisco but few people will actually use most the feature cisco has.

A Mikrotik?
https://www.amazon.com/Mikrotik-CSS326-24G-2S-RM-Gigabit-Ethernet/dp/B0723DT6MN

(on my shortlist as well)

 

[Myronazz]

"I'm on the search for a switch because I'm tired of unstable power lines "

I am missing how new/replacement switches will resolve power line issues?

Power Lines are the devices that use the power outlets in the house to transmit Ethernet signals through their wiring. I've had them for years; they are unstable as hell dropping their connection randomly because they loose sight of each other. All appliances in the house are new. No transformers. No UPS's. No power strips. Brand new fuse-box but still old house and old wiring (built in the 60s). If that's the problem, I can't do anything. And I don't fancy buying new powerlines to discover they have similar issues. The current ones I have are modern TP-Links bought in 2016. They have this problem since then.

Since the house is currently under maintenance, I was thinking of wiring it up with RJ-45 wiring and get a good switch to connect every device in the house so I can ditch them completely. I wanted a Switch like the ones above to have far more control and flexibility over my local network. It'd be fun to set some new things up too.

Why so cheap?
Those are easily 15 years old.

Damn you are right. We had these in the lab along with similar models in our simulators so I never thought they'd be that old. They still had support until 2018 like someone mentioned... so... they at least had coverage. They are gonna be in my home behind my router which has an updated firewall appliance and NAT. So it's not a problem really, unless the hackerz get in my house... or pass through my firewall... in which case I don't think it'd matter too much what switch I have tbh.

Look very closely at the models you linked. There are a lot of models of 3750. A large part of why those switches are so cheap in addition to the above comments is those only have 10/100 ports. They must have a letter "G" in the part to have gigabit ports.

That's alright. I can find the Gigabit models for a little more money. I just happened to post these cause like I said they everywhere.

Nobody uses 10/100 ports anymore. Somewhere I have a link for a brand new switch with 24 gigabit ports and 2 10g SFP ports for $139. Not a cisco but few people will actually use most the feature cisco has.

I did consider something else, but I'm very familiar with iOS in particular. I like it a lot... but I could apply what I know to other switches too. The only problems with these that I consider serious is their age. They gonna die in the middle of work so I guess I really should get something else. I'll have to do my research.

 

[kanewolf]

The only problems with these that I consider serious is their age. They gonna die in the middle of work so I guess I really should get something else. I'll have to do my research.

The old Cisco switches like these did not have hot swap power supplies or fans. Those are the components most likely to fail. The 3750X had replaceable power supplies.

 

[Myronazz]

The old Cisco switches like these did not have hot swap power supplies or fans. Those are the components most likely to fail. The 3750X had replaceable power supplies.

Aye. The fans? I would it have it on the loft so if those die I wouldn't notice. I wonder if those things are smart enough to notify you when it happens? Or are the fans just electrically connected to power and that's it? Maybe they are PWM-controlled although if I remember right they ran 100% all the time and sounded like jet-engines hence why I want it on the loft .

As for the power supplies... well... "non-swappable" power supplies don't always stop me, but if the wiring is not straight-forward and there isn't documentation, then I suppose it could be a problem.

Either way, i'll probably look for a modern switch. That Mikrotik looks pretty nice and has most of what I need... although it doesn't have SSH. I'd want that for scripting.

 

[bill001g]

Not sure what you are planning but most cisco switches are not remotely managed via SSH. Most use SNMP via packages like solarwinds....well maybe not that one so much anymore. I have not looked at the mikrotik capabilties to see what if any SNMP it has.

 

[Myronazz]

Not sure what you are planning but most cisco switches are not remotely managed via SSH.

What? I was logging into iOS with SSH all the time for switches and routers similar to the ones above. I did entire configurations this way from everything to L2 and L3 functionality and security. You can literally set up an SVI to login through the SSH TTY. I know using SNMP was also possible, but we mostly did SSH. I thought this is the way iOS is. And catOS too, although I never used the latter.

 

[bill001g]

If you manually configure them pretty much everyone uses ssh. My comment was more because you talked about scripting.

 

[Myronazz]

Oh, I see what you mean. Well... I more or less wanted SSH to script iOS commands. I'm no enterprise so I don't need SNMP for a single switch nor do I need to monitor it all the time. If something goes wrong I can just login and start digging to find out.