My experience is different than what you describe. I think what you are saying was true of old unswitched hubs, but my understanding is that switched hubs minimally implement a switch fabric (I say minimally because some switches implement spanning trees and other more complex protocols) which includes the examination of ethernet headers and making decisions to which port a packet should be forwarded. I have seen all kinds of cheap switches that get confused and don't forward packets correctly. I've heard that the bridged networking in vmware, or other configurations with multiple mac addresses being sent out a single port can confuse poorly designed switch fabrics. Then there are buffering capabilites, switching between a 10 or 100MB port and and a 1000MB port can be very different between a quality switch a a poor one.
12 years ago when I was doing alot of work with startup ISP's I saw alot of problems with Cisco catalyst switches. I don't know how they work today. I had very good results in terms of reliability and performance with extreme networks switches. But that was several years ago. So I don't feel that all switches are the same.
My experiences in the past was with other applications, so the question that I ask here is in regard to switches being used with vmware bridged networking. I have need for both high end switches which connect the vmware servers to my clients internal network, and less expensive switches for DMZs and interconnection to internet routers. I can spend more than $150 for a switch if necessary, but the performance needs for this clients internet and DMZ networks are not that great. I'm looking for a switch that will work reliably. Right now the high end nortel switch works find with the vmware server, but another switch, (I think it is a dlink) is causing us problems.
Thank you,
Nataraj
