FS S5860-24XB-U Internal Overview
Here is the switch with the port side on the left and the PSU and fan side on the right. We have the PSUs out to be able to safely get this shot.
The first item one will notice is that the airflow is a bit strange on this switch. There is not a single large switch chip. Also, the PSUs pull air from the left side of the chasiss where there is a small channel. The rest of the switch components are cooled by the fans on the right rear of the chassis. Behind the vent we showed on the front right there is an internal airflow guide. That helps explain the orientation of some of the heatsinks because the airflow seems to generally be from the front left to the rear right instead of straight front to back.
Unlike FS’s higher-end 100GbE switches, like the FS N8560-32C 32x 100GbE switch we reviewed, the switch and management functions are all on the main PCB. The switch chip is the Broadcom Hurricane3-MG BCM56170.
That is Broadcom’s campus switch solution with an onboard Arm A9 management processor. It is designed for exactly this type of deployment scenario.
There is a forest of heatsinks providing cooling for the 10Gbase-T components as well.
Just behind the 24x multi-gig ports, we have a PoE board sitting atop the main switch board.
Here is another angle.
The hot swap fans are located just behind the switch chip. There is a separate board that has the hot-swap fan connectors.
The power supply connection point is certainly different. The connectors are not the common data center PSU connectors. That may be to support the particular 53.5V PSUs being used. Also, there is a metal backplate to this area. So air is pulled from small channels on either side. We see many switch vendors use PSU airflow to cool a switch, but that is not what FS is doing here.
Overall, there is quite a bit going on in this switch, but let us next take a look at the management.
Worth noting that from looking at the picture the Fans in the fan module use non-standard connectors making it more difficult to replace them.
This switch is a L3 which explains his price, i’am looking for a L2+ switch with Multi-Gigabit and PoE and couple of 10gbit/s SFP+ but still no sign of it
@flo, have you looked at 2nd Ruckus ICX switches, they are L3, but afordable when you find them 2nd hand.
vs the 800 buck mikrotik i see mikrotik winning here as you can add poe switches for cheap if you have the need – the primary weak link for smb sector going into 2023 is networking and 100g delivers – or you can break out into 25g as well – hopefully there will be more 100gbe swicthes for under 1k coming onto the mkt soon!
This switch actually will not support the full Wifi 7 feature set: TSN is missing. The Broadcom switch family only supports it on select models. TSN is already huge in the professional content production sector (it is called AVB over there), common in smart cars and replacing legacy CAM protocols. Deterministic Ethernet is a very nice feature to have.
I’m kind of confused about the need for 10G PoE, broadcast cameras perhaps?
@Bob H: There are some switches that can pull power through PoE to power themselves, so you could put a switch in a location that is hard to power (say a couple of cameras on a parking lot light pole that has time or photo sensitive power, ie off at night). I don’t think you need 10GbE for it, but who knows.
@Bob H: While a full 24x 10GbE might be slightly overkill it is nice to have that flexibility.
I recently got two of these to go with 10G PoE Highspeed/-bandwidth cameras (5MP@200fps for a research application). Didn’t get to fully test it yet though. Probably pretty niche but it was hard finding any alternatives that don’t completely break the bank
Alpha Novatech heatsink on the main controller chip…
This usually means the company said this “F the cost, let’s get the best stuff”….
my dream switch! now when does unifi and netgear make one?