Silent home lab

I have a bunch of 2600xm routers, and I was pondering about disconnecting the fans, but keep the covers open, and seperate the routers with about 1RU. This would of course kill the noise, but will it kill the routers? Looks like the fan just pushes out hot air from the box, and this wouldn't be a problem with an open chassis. Same goes with 2500 as far as I know.

So when I get enough 3560-8pc switches I will have a silent lab, right?

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Comments

mikej412

Disconnecting the fans & running with open covers would be my 4th choice behind my current 3 solutions:
1. Work remote from lab.
2. Bose noise canceling headphones.
3. Smith & Wesson Suppressor Ear Muffs.

tiersten

Taking the cover off means cooling may be affected as it will now rely solely on convection instead of forced air cooling. That said, it'll probably be okay as they're generally rated to run in a hot comms cupboard somewhere but you do this at your own risk. If anything dies because a chip got too hot then its your own problem :P

alan2308

If noise is a problem, find an old wireless router, put DD-WRT or OpenWRT on it, configure it as a wireless bridge, and put it and the Cisco gear somewhere else in the house, such as the basement.

Greenmet29

I did the same thing with my routers and it hasn't been a problem at all. I even put the covers back on the switches that I have because they don't have a enclosed power supply. I've been running them like this for about 6 months, and they're still going strong

You can see pics of my lab on the "Post your lab (pics)", page 18