An unusual but cool switch for creative professionals
With three 10 gigabit ports, the new XGS1250-12 switch provides added capacity for high-speed connections that can run over copper cabling, thus avoiding the disruption and cost of upgrading more of the network to fibre, says Luke Harley, Market Development Manager EMEA for Switching at Zyxel
Like many things in life, network bandwidth only becomes a problem when there is not enough of it. Amazingly, we always seem to need more, so this is a problem that does come up every now and again.
Our appetite and need for additional capacity would seem to have no limits. The IT industry keeps on making advances with graphical, image and video processing, and display technologies. Design, development and editing tools have become more and more sophisticated. Many companies now use cloud-based services – for their everyday productivity apps and to run virtual desktops, or simply for backup and disaster recovery purposes.
If you are an architect, engineer, graphic designer, video producer, or a games developer. Or if you just move very large files around from time to time, you will probably have experienced a drop in network performance due to your available bandwidth being eaten up when large images and/or files are being moved across the network.
Simple solution
In almost every situation like this, there will be a simple answer; increase the bandwidth. That will mean installing new network switches that will give you the additional capacity you need. It might also mean you need to upgrade your cabling, but that can add significantly to the cost, and might not always be entirely necessary.
Zyxel is always advancing its product designs and our XGS range of switches is built to meet the needs of customers who need to support high bandwidth rates on their networks. Up to now, we have provided (on the web managed XGS1210-12 and unmanaged XGS1010-12) eight 1 gigabit ports; two that will support connections of up to 2.5 gigabits over copper cabling; and two SFP (small form-factor pluggable) ports for fibre connections.
Customer feedback is vitally important to us and drives almost every aspect of our research and development work. After we introduced the two former mentioned switches, some customers came back to us and said that, while they liked the switch, having two fibre ports and two 2.5 gigabit-capable ports was not always what they needed. Fibre is expensive and if you need to replace existing copper cabling, that can prove to be a costly exercise – especially when the faster connection would easily be supported by existing copper wire.
Ideal for SMBs
To meet this need, we are now introducing the XGS1250-12 – a multi-gigabit web manageable switch that has three 10 gigabit ports for copper connections and only one SFP port. Like the XGS1210-12, it still has the eight 1 gigabit ports, so it still provides plenty of fast connections to suit different kinds of network equipment and endpoints.
The XGS1250-12 should be ideal for any small business that needs to move around high-definition and rich media content and / or large files on a regular basis, but who don’t perhaps need to make use of the full 10 gigabits of bandwidth that is supported by fibre connections. Using the latest switching technology, speeds of up to 10 Gb can be supported across copper cabling, which means not having to go to the disruption and expense of installing fibre.
The three-to-one ratio of 10 gigabit Copper to SFP ports on the XGS1250-12 is certainly unusual but we also like to think it is pretty cool – and it should be exactly what many small professional and creative businesses need to support their need to increased speed and bandwidth on the network.
