Linksys has announced its first ‘managed switches’ in its business product line-up.

The new managed switches are available in a 28 and 52-port rack mountable chassis, with and without Power over Ethernet Plus (PoE+).

Managed switches offer more advanced security and bandwidth control for IT administrators compared to smart and unmanaged switches, to ensure stability of the business network, the company said.

“We have a significant advantage because we have developed the entire Linksys Business product portfolio from scratch,” said Amanulla Khan, director sales, Belkin. “Therefore we have been able to include the latest technologies and features including Power over Ethernet Plus (PoE+) enabling businesses to power other or more devices on a the network through a single switch. Devices that require more power such as videophones and dual-band wireless access points can now also be powered by a switch with PoE+.”

The PoE+ models support the latest IEEE 802.3at (PoE+) standard and provide up to a 30W power budget per ethernet port while offering IEEE 802.3af (PoE) backward compatibility. PoE+ simplifies and reduces complex technology deployments such as IP telephony, wireless AP, and IP surveillance by allowing IT administrators to connect and power devices over a single ethernet cable at a lower cost.

Linksys managed switches feature port authentication and MAC-based port security, requiring clients to authenticate themselves before any data is passed. Advanced DHCP snooping and IP-MAC-Port binding functions ensure network integrity and help prevent network attacks. These advanced features enable business to secure their network environment and prevent unauthorized access to the network and mission-critical data.

The switches include features for quickly expanding and growing your network. Multiple high-bandwidth trunks between switches enhance availability and redundancy. Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) and Storm Control features help control planned or inadvertent cable loops, so administrators can confidently build a mesh of switches and quickly expand their network to support the organizations growing workforce.

With additional Gigabit or 10-Gigabit uplink SFP/SFP+ fibre-optic port expansions for servers and data centres, Linksys managed switches provide an ideal combination of business scalability and affordability.

Features of the managed switches includes:

• Layer 3 static routing
• 24 or 48 Gigabit Ethernet ports
• Two combo mini-GBIC (SFP) ports
• Two 10-Gigabit uplink Ethernet SFP+ ports (LGS552P and LGS552)
• Integrated Power over Ethernet Plus (PoE+) (LGS528P and LGS552P)
• Energy Efficient Ethernet Technology (802.3az)
• Port and Tag based VLAN support for up to 1024 VLANs (802.1Q)
• Automatic Voice VLAN, Guest VLAN and Dynamic VLAN assignment
• Tagged or Port based QoS support (802.1P)
• Storm Control – Broadcast, Multicast, and Unknown Unicast
• IGMP Snooping, Rapid Spanning Tree- RSTP, BPDU flooding/filtering
• Advanced Quality of Service (QoS) support with layer 2/3/4 Traffic Prioritization – Voice, Video, and Data
• Advanced Network Security support 802.1X Port Security and DHCP Snooping
• Web-based and SNMP Management Interface

With the latest addition the Linksys business line-up now includes a full range of cost effective routing, switching, VPN, wireless and IP Surveillance solutions. – TradeArabia News Service