Switch Pricing

mzinz

I'm trying to find the following for a home lab:
2 or 3 2950's
2 3550's


How much do used 2950's and used 3550's usually go for? Assuming all 24 port?

What's a good price?

kalebksp

My two 2950s were $50 each, and my two 3550s were ~$200 each. 2950s for ~$50 are pretty easy to come by, just look for "Buy it Now"s on eBay. Getting the 3550s took some careful bidding.

mzinz

kalebksp wrote: »

My two 2950s were $50 each, and my two 3550s were ~$200 each. 2950s for ~$50 are pretty easy to come by, just look for "Buy it Now"s on eBay. Getting the 3550s took some careful bidding.

Great, thank you for the info. I've been bidding ~$30 for 2950's, and I just won a 3550 for $95

I'm seeing a lot of good deals on Craigslist too - it's pretty apparent that the economy is having an effect.

Also - Which routers are recommended for CCNP (BSCI)?

kalebksp

mzinz wrote: »

Great, thank you for the info. I've been bidding ~$30 for 2950's, and I just won a 3550 for $95

And I thought I had gotten a good deal!

mzinz wrote: »

Also - Which routers are recommended for CCNP (BSCI)?

I highly recommend reading this: CCNP Lab Series ? Master Links | NetworkWorld.com Community. The pricing on there is high, but the recommendations are good. I like the 3640s, as long as they come with modules. I don't have any 1700s, but they 1721 is pretty popular.

nel

a 3550 for 95 dollars? jeez, in the UK i see them go for over £300. 2950's start from £50 for a 12 port usually.

miller811

mzinz wrote: »

Great, thank you for the info. I've been bidding ~$30 for 2950's, and I just won a 3550 for $95

I'm seeing a lot of good deals on Craigslist too - it's pretty apparent that the economy is having an effect.

Also - Which routers are recommended for CCNP (BSCI)?

Are you sure it was a 3550 and not a 3500?
I have been watching the 3550 for months, average selling prices seems to be $260-$280 plus shipping. Some going a little higher, depending on port count.

ColbyG

miller811 wrote: »

Are you sure it was a 3550 and not a 3500?
I have been watching the 3550 for months, average selling prices seems to be $260-$280 plus shipping. Some going a little higher, depending on port count.

Yea, a 3550 for that cheap seems too good to be true.

BADfish10

Trying Not to sound to sour but living in the UK sucks for this sort of thing!

ECHO the other guys
$95 you sure it is a 3550 not a 3500 ?
dose it come with the power supply!

Just a thought

mzinz

Ugh... so I just double checked and realized that he titled the auction "Cisco Catalyst 3550 24 Port Switch WS-C3524-PWR-XL-EN"...

Should I demand a refund, or demand a 3550? Arg!!

kalebksp

I would try to get a refund. It's going to depend on what the description had in it. People put all sorts of crazy stuff in the titles, you gotta really pay attention to what you're buying.

mzinz

kalebksp wrote: »

I would try to get a refund. It's going to depend on what the description had in it. People put all sorts of crazy stuff in the titles, you gotta really pay attention to what you're buying.

Yeah. It turns out that he had made a typo in the title (sure). He is willing to give me a refund - out of curiosity, how much is a 3524 worth, and are they useful in labs?

Maybe I could talk him down some?

Slowhand

kalebksp wrote: »

My two 2950s were $50 each, and my two 3550s were ~$200 each. 2950s for ~$50 are pretty easy to come by, just look for "Buy it Now"s on eBay. Getting the 3550s took some careful bidding.

This is almost identical to what I found. I paid about $100 for my 2950, but the prices have dropped since then, and you can find 3550s for about $200 - $300 these days.

miller811

mzinz wrote: »

Yeah. It turns out that he had made a typo in the title (sure). He is willing to give me a refund - out of curiosity, how much is a 3524 worth, and are they useful in labs?

Maybe I could talk him down some?

I had a pair of 3524 switches that I recently placed on ebay. I sold them as a pair. I started it with a minimum $39.99 bid, and the someone ended up purchasing the pair for the $39.99. I was disapointed, but those are the breaks....

Paul Boz

I think I paid about $375 or so each, shipped. That seems to be the "middle of the road" price for 3550's. Expect to pay double if not more for a 3560. Umf.

kpjungle

Some of the cheapest 3550's i can find on ebay.co.uk is $420. That sucks. I have 2 3560's, but I could really use two 3550's on top of that. Its almost cheaper to buy them from the US and pay the extra tax.

ColbyG

I just grabbed a 3550 last night for $250 shipped. It's a guy on Ebay with a bunch, his price is $299, just make an offer lower than $250 and he'll counter with $250 and then you have your 3550 for pretty cheap.

mzinz

I'm going to try and find some 3550's this week then. Hopefully at around ~$200.

Will 16MBFlash/64MBRAM work? What's the newest IOS?

tiersten

mzinz wrote: »

Will 16MBFlash/64MBRAM work? What's the newest IOS?

All 3550 switches have the same flash/RAM. Latest is 12.2.46-SE.

mzinz

tiersten wrote: »

All 3550 switches have the same flash/RAM. Latest is 12.2.46-SE.

Good to know. I just picked up a 48 porter for $250 after tax and shipping. A little more than I wanted to pay, but oh well

malcybood

I just got myself a bargain.....a 48 port 3550 SMI with EMI image on it for £165, which is around $240, includes shipping. (£150 for switch and £15 for shipping)

I've been keeping my eye on Ebay for the last 2 weeks and lost out on a switch for £210 delivered (gutted) but it's worked out better anyway for me.

I sit the BSCI on 6th March and aim to go straight into the BCMSN after. I already have 3 x 2950's so I'm pretty sorted.

The easiest way to tell if it is the correct version is to request a full show version output from the seller although most of them provide this on ebay anyway. If it says

Cisco IOS Software, C3550 Software (C3550-IPBASE-M), Version 12.2(25)SEB4, RELEA
SE SOFTWARE (fc1)
Copyright (c) 1986-2005 by Cisco Systems, Inc.
Compiled Tue 30-Aug-05 13:14 by yenanh

ROM: Bootstrap program is C3550 boot loader
uptime is 23 weeks, 3 days, 17 hours, 48 minutes
System returned to ROM by power-on
System image file is "flash:c3550-ipbase-mz.122-25.SEB4/c3550-ipbase-mz.122-25.S
EB4.bin"

Cisco WS-C3550-48 (PowerPC) processor (revision L0) with 65526K/8192K bytes of m
emory.
Processor board ID CAT0753Z0A5
Last reset from warm-reset
Running Layer2/3 Switching Image

Ethernet-controller 1 has 12 Fast Ethernet/IEEE 802.3 interfaces

Ethernet-controller 2 has 12 Fast Ethernet/IEEE 802.3 interfaces

Ethernet-controller 3 has 12 Fast Ethernet/IEEE 802.3 interfaces

Ethernet-controller 4 has 12 Fast Ethernet/IEEE 802.3 interfaces

Ethernet-controller 5 has 1 Gigabit Ethernet/IEEE 802.3 interface

Ethernet-controller 6 has 1 Gigabit Ethernet/IEEE 802.3 interface

48 FastEthernet interfaces
2 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces

The password-recovery mechanism is enabled.
384K bytes of flash-simulated NVRAM.
Base ethernet MAC Address: 00:0E: D7:99:5E:80
Motherboard assembly number: 73-5701-09
Power supply part number: 34-0967-01
Motherboard serial number: CAT080101BF
Power supply serial number: DTH0750333F
Model revision number: L0
Motherboard revision number: A0
Model number: WS-C3550-48-SMI
System serial number: CAT0753Z0A5
Configuration register is 0x10F

For the ISCW I got a hold of an old VPN3000 concentrator from work for IPSec.

ONT I'll probably do some labs but mainly just read the book and watch Jeremy's CBT's as I have been doing alot of QoS design and implementation work over the last month so hopefully that will help me out there. Aiming to be a 2009 CCNP!

miller811

Had to juimp in myself, I purchase a 24 port POE about 3 weeks ago, and have been watching for additional one for several weeks. Low balled 2 switches in the last 2 days, and scored one this afternoon. Capped my bid at $210. and ended up with the purchase for $208.49 for a 48 port 3550.

ColbyG

miller811 wrote: »

Had to juimp in myself, I purchase a 24 port POE about 3 weeks ago, and have been watching for additional one for several weeks. Low balled 2 switches in the last 2 days, and scored one this afternoon. Capped my bid at $210. and ended up with the purchase for $208.49 for a 48 port 3550.

Nice price. How much was shipping?

miller811

$25 via UPS

mzinz

Slightly unrelated, but does anyone know the physical difference between 2620 and 2620XM? The XM can use 12.4 and the non-XM can use 12.3...

tiersten

mzinz wrote: »

Slightly unrelated, but does anyone know the physical difference between 2620 and 2620XM? The XM can use 12.4 and the non-XM can use 12.3...

2600XM is a newer improved version of the 2600. Hardwarewise they're fairly similar. The 2600XM can take more flash/RAM and has fast ethernet instead of regular ethernet.

You can actually make a 2600 run a 2600XM IOS but it is unreliable because of lack of memory. You'll probably need to use T FTP to load it as well.

dynamik

miller811 wrote: »

Had to juimp in myself, I purchase a 24 port POE about 3 weeks ago, and have been watching for additional one for several weeks. Low balled 2 switches in the last 2 days, and scored one this afternoon. Capped my bid at $210. and ended up with the purchase for $208.49 for a 48 port 3550.

Nice! I just got a 48-port 3550 for use at my shop. I got it for $225, so it looks like that's right in line with everyone else. I have a terrible habit of focusing on "winning" on eBay. I'm too competitive, and it can cost me

Bleego

malcybood wrote: »

The easiest way to tell if it is the correct version is to request a full show version output from the seller although most of them provide this on ebay anyway.

I wanted to post to reiterate this. I have gotten burned on ebay buying a 2950 off of ebay that I did not get a show ver output. The description said "has a blinking sys light" what it didn't say is "Has a blinking AMBER sys light" .. so I paid about $70 for a cartographers paperweight. Many many auctions include a show ver output. Unless its a really good deal ( with a non-DOA garantee policy ) I'd stick to something with a show ver.

On a side note.. AFAIK the 35% cashback with livesearch deal is still going on. ( Details here 35% cash back from eBay purchase using Microsoft Live Search *No selling!* - SlickDeals.net Forums ) This only works for Buy it Now, but I have seen quite a few 3550's for a Buy it now price of $299. I'm thinking of grabbing one sometime soon.

mzinz

Bleego wrote: »

I wanted to post to reiterate this. I have gotten burned on ebay buying a 2950 off of ebay that I did not get a show ver output. The description said "has a blinking sys light" what it didn't say is "Has a blinking AMBER sys light" .. so I paid about $70 for a cartographers paperweight. Many many auctions include a show ver output. Unless its a really good deal ( with a non-DOA garantee policy ) I'd stick to something with a show ver.

On a side note.. AFAIK the 35% cashback with livesearch deal is still going on. ( Details here 35% cash back from eBay purchase using Microsoft Live Search *No selling!* - SlickDeals.net Forums ) This only works for Buy it Now, but I have seen quite a few 3550's for a Buy it now price of $299. I'm thinking of grabbing one sometime soon.

It looks like the cashback deal is currently DEAD for eBay. Had me scared for a second!

I just picked up 2 2950's for $65 a piece with free shipping. Now I need another 3550 and some 2650XM's!

Bleego

mzinz wrote: »

It looks like the cashback deal is currently DEAD for eBay. Had me scared for a second!

I just picked up 2 2950's for $65 a piece with free shipping. Now I need another 3550 and some 2650XM's!

Oh, damn. I was looking forward to getting a 3550 switch for myself for cheaper. Oh well. That's why I'm putting off BCMSN for last, give myself time to buy the switches I need.

mzinz

What are the main differences between the 3500 (3524) and 2900 (2950) switches?

Neither does layer3... They can both load 12.4 (I think)... Is it backplane and nothing more?

tiersten

mzinz wrote: »

What are the main differences between the 3500 (3524) and 2900 (2950) switches?

You're comparing different generation switches. 3500XL against 2950. You need to look at the older 2900XL.

2960 + 3560 = Current = 12.2
2950 + 3550 = Last gen = 12.1 for 2950 and 12.2 for 3550
2900XL + 3500XL = Even older = 12.0

The version number of IOS for switches lags behind that for routers. There isn't a 12.4 for any of those switches. 12.0 has some commands which are different in 12.1 and above. That is why if you can afford to spend a little more, that you should get a 2950 as a minimum.