Silent fan for Cisco switch

I thought about putting this topic in the Cisco forums, but it's not quite certification-related, so I decided to throw it in here.

At home I use a Cisco 2950 (12-port) full-time and it's kind of noisy in my office. I tune it out somewhat after a while, but it's still distracting. I have a 2950 (48-port) I can swap it out with, although I think the fan's not really working. The upside is that it's nice and quiet. The downside ... well, I wonder if it'll blow up on me one day. Has anyone ever had a problem with a managed switch overheating because of a dead fan?

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Comments

it_consultant

I had a similar experience with Cisco routers. We had a T1 terminated by a 1U cisco router, we switched to an ISP that used ad trans which dont have fans. The guy who was setting up the phone switch to work with it had to call the ISP to make sure the router was turned on.

Look for switches that are quieter, somewhere in the specifications you should be able to find noise and fan information.

ehnde

The HP switches at school, the ones I worked with in Cisco Network Academy at school back in 2004, and my Catalyst 2950 have all been noisy. I've never seen a quiet switch

It'd be nice if there was some trick to making the 2950 quiet.

networker050184

If its just for a home office I'd go with a small SOHO switch. It will be smaller and a lot quieter.

docrice

Actually, I need IOS. It's all part of my learning lab. I have trunks, SPANs, and VLANs set up for my environment and they're all required for the kind of things I do.

networker050184

docrice wrote: »

Actually, I need IOS. It's all part of my learning lab. I have trunks, SPANs, and VLANs set up for my environment and they're all required for the kind of things I do.

In that case, I think you are stuck with the sound.

tiersten

You can remove the fans but you risk the switch overheating. The chances are usually fairly small since the switch will have been rated for full speed operation on every port whilst in a comms cupboard with very limited airflow but even so, it isn't recommended to do so.

Some switches actively monitor all the fans and if you remove or swap out the fans then it will shutdown the switch and prevent it from operating.