I bought a HP ProCurve 1800-24G (J9028B) to replace a gigabit switch, a 100mbit switch, and an old router turned AP turned poor-mans switch (I forget the models and don’t really care). It only has a webui and no means of console management, I had kinda hoped for ssh access but oh well. The fact that it was fanless with 24 gigabit ports really sold me and it being cheaper on ebay than a lot of the “normal” consumer gear helped. I didn’t want something else screeching in the background while I’m in my room and wasn’t sure about the fan mods for other more power hungry models, like say a 24-port one with POE.

It looks like this

hp j9028b

I overestimated the ports I needed but if I ever get a chance to use it to run a whole house of stuff or at least part of it then it’d be more occupied. At least until I start playing with POE stuff, like maybe a small stack of Raspberry Pis with POE hats but I suppose then I could find a small, fanless 8-port switch that can do POE.

I’m curious about putting some physical things on a vlan and not just my VMs. Like maybe an isolated vlan for a rando computer I might fix, internet only and no access to anything else. Or stashing some Pis on my vlan I use for VMs and LXC containers.