Just thought I'd add.......


If you are really looking for a pure layer 2 unmanaged switch allied telyson/centre com makes pretty stable ones. I'd guess if you looked hard you could get a 48 port one for a few hundred bucks. That's swell and will help tremendously if your network is presently flooding with unicast traffic. If you generate a lot of broadcast traffic, however, a pure layer 2 switch isn't going to help you much. You will have to look at some of the 'big boys' out there in order to control that.

My advice-- before you buy, stick a sniffer on your wire and see how your traffic breaks down. What percent is unicast/multicast/broadcast? That should influence your decision as to whether or not you need a 'dumb' or a 'smart' switch.