It may not look much from the outside, but Netgear's GSM7324 is an important new product in two respects. To start with, it's the first Layer 3 switch to come from the budget networking vendor, added to which it sets a new price point for such products at just over £90 + VAT per (Gigabit Ethernet) port.

The majority of low-cost switches are Layer 2 devices, which means adding separate routers to support large segmented networks. A Layer 3 switch, however, can route information between sub-nets itself, using TCP/IP and other protocol information found at the network layer. This it can do much faster than a dedicated router, added to which the GSM7324 can prioritise traffic based on type and user involved - important features when, for example, building converged voice and data networks

Because it's designed to be a backbone switch, the new GSM7324 is quite bulky and best suited to rack mounting. It also features a built-in power supply and four noisy cooling fans, making it very much the kind of product you'd want to put in a separate, dedicated, machine room.

On the connectivity front you get 24 auto-sensing 10/100/1000Mbps UTP ports with the last four ports sharing physical connectivity with a set of four SFP (Small Form-factor Pluggable) sockets for use with fibre networks. These are backed up by a 40Gigabit/sec store-and-forward switching engine, but there's no dedicated backplane to link to other switches for expansion. Instead, any port can be used as an up-link with facilities too for the creation of aggregated port trunks. However, you can't manage multiple switches together as with some more expensive solutions.

On the plus side you're almost spoilt for choice when it comes to management interfaces, starting with a serial console port and the usual command line interface (CLI) for initial setup. The same CLI can also be accessed remotely via telnet plus there's support for SNMP and RMON, Netgear supplying suitable MIB files to go with this option.

There's also the now mandatory Web interface, although this does little to simplify management other than make the various options more accessible. Indeed, it's important to appreciate that a fair amount of technical expertise is required to configure a Layer 3 switch, particularly the more advanced VLAN and Quality of Service (QoS) options.

Given that it's no easier to deploy than other Layer 3 solutions, price is clearly the main draw with the Netgear GSM7324. It's more expensive than a standard Layer 2 switch (some of which can be had for less than £40 per port) but cheaper than comparable Layer 3 products from other vendors.

That said, Netgear is a relative newcomer in this market and may find it hard to compete on price alone. Moreover, although smaller enterprises - such as those looking to add voice to their networks - will find it attractive, larger organisations are likely to want more features and greater scalability.

This device sets a new, affordable price point for Layer 3 switching and, with its 24 Gigabit Ethernet ports, the Netgear GSM7324 is a good solution for the smaller enterprise looking to build segmented or converged voice and data networks. Companies with larger networks, however, may want more features and scalability than are provided by the Netgear product.