The Dell N1100 is a nice switch, but a relatively new product (<3 years old). Also, the article mentions how noisy the cooling fans can be in "enterprise" grade switches, but they are quite loud in the N series too (at least in the case of the N3048).
Early this year, I got contacted by DellEMC via a voicemail message, which I initially thought was spam or phishing because they should have used the email associated with my DellEMC support account. It turned out that the voicemail was legit, and the message was that I needed to update the firmware in all of our switches (including N1100) before 7/27/2021, or they would all stop working(!)
It turns out that the feature license management system had a root certificate that was due to expire, and all licensed features would cease to function if the switches were not upgraded.
I spent about a day on the phone with them upgrading our switches, and (almost) everything turned out okay in the end.
Below is my survey response to their support feedback request:
1) The products should not have a built-in time-bomb that causes them to stop working after only a few years.
2) Dell should have informed us of this issue by email. Instead they left a very "phishing" like voicemail on a manager's phone. (Not the phone of the registered point-of-contract for the cluster.) Perhaps this was done to avoid leaving evidence of #1 above?
3) I spent over an hour on hold when I returned the call, and was then disconnected. After trying again (to an extension other than the one given in the message), I reached somebody who confirmed the issue. I spent another four hours on the phone resolving it.
4) Shortly after all of the above, I discovered a new issue that severely impacted the cluster. The n3048 switch would no longer auto-negotiate a 100Mbps Ethernet link. Our network watchdog device (iBoot) was continuously cycling the power on our Internet Ingress (ONT+ASA).
5) I spent even more time troubleshooting and resolving this issue (by locking the iBoot port to 100Mbps instead of leaving it on Auto).
6) I did not waste any more of my time by reporting this issue. The technician I worked with to upgrade these switches assured me that the firmware releases we used were "stable".
The non POE N1100's are fanless, Thankfully don't really contain any features that would require licencing, that being said also has no hardware Layer 3 capability, so not really in the same class as the N3XXX or N2XXX's
The licencing thing does suck though, that's poor from Dell who normally (at least switches wise) do a reasonably good job for the price.
> The products should not have a built-in time-bomb that causes them to stop working after only a few years.
First Turtle Beach bricked my Audiotron by abandoning the web site required for it to function, then Grace Digital bricked my three GD streaming devices for the same reason.
> Grace Digital bricked my three GD streaming devices
If you are referring to a Reciva based internet radio the web site which powers them was shut down by the owner of that site, not by Grace Digital. Also, if it is similar to my CC Wifi Reciva based radio it is still possible to access existing presets on the radio although you can no longer add presets or modify them any more. When you power it on wait for the Network Error caused by the lack of the back end and then press Back twice and then a preset. The media server functionality also still works.
> If you are referring to a Reciva based internet radio the web site which powers them was shut down by the owner of that site, not by Grace Digital
I am referring to that. I'm reduced to 3 presets. The disaster is that:
1. the device was critically connected to a resource that GD does not control
2. GD offers no way to change this dependency, no way to redirect it elsewhere, no way to change the presets, no way to access radio stations, etc
3. I don't see any reason why they had to use Reciva to access Pandora
None of this was disclosed when I bought them. GD should offer a web interface to it, like my router has.
The media server does still work, but it can't read USB sticks with more than 32G of capacity.
But my Roku device can. Roku works fine when I hook up a 16T drive to its USB port. Pretty much all the streaming devices I looked at as replacement for GD have strange limitations on what can be connected (some USB sticks work, others do not), Roku does not.
I'm kinda shocked that 20 years after the Turtle Beach Audiotron, streaming devices are still mired in the stone age with bad user interfaces, poor device support, unusable displays, bricking, and very buggy (my GDs regularly locked up).
My GD display, for example, shows:
1. the title of the song
2. the bit rate
3. the elapsed time
When it should show:
1. title/album/band
2. time remaining
3. album cover art
The GD is like 90% towards being a good product. Why not go the last 10%?
At the time that CCrane, Grace and others started offering internet radios everyone was using Reciva and articles at the time referred to it as the Microsoft of internet radio so I don't think anyone at the time could have expected its downfall. This was really regarded as the safe bet. Also Grace has not offered a Reciva based radio for quite a few years so you must have quite an old one and have gotten many years of use out of it.
The CC Wifi 3 I got to replace my CC Wifi does have some anti-obsolescence features. It can be used as a bluetooth speaker and it has a built in web server that you can connect into from a browser and manually enter the URLs of streams so even if the Skytunes backend goes defunct like Reciva did the radio should still be somewhat usable.
If your radio can receive bluetooth you could put your media on a uPnP server, access it using vlc on a smartphone and then from there send it via bluetooth to the radio using it as a bluetooth speaker. That is probably more convenient than mucking with the radio to select audio files since you can do it on your smartphone with a better user interface. Anyways, that is what I do.
> put your media on a uPnP server, access it using vlc on a smartphone and then from there send it via bluetooth to the radio using it as a bluetooth speaker.
Hertzshaffnocheinmal! What a contraption. Here's what I want:
1. plug a USB device in that has all my media files on it
2. push "shuffle"
3. push "play"
Like how CD players work. In fact, even steps 2 and 3 should be optional. It should just work when the USB device is plugged in.
Below is my survey response to their support feedback request:
1) The products should not have a built-in time-bomb that causes them to stop working after only a few years.
2) Dell should have informed us of this issue by email. Instead they left a very "phishing" like voicemail on a manager's phone. (Not the phone of the registered point-of-contract for the cluster.) Perhaps this was done to avoid leaving evidence of #1 above?
3) I spent over an hour on hold when I returned the call, and was then disconnected. After trying again (to an extension other than the one given in the message), I reached somebody who confirmed the issue. I spent another four hours on the phone resolving it.
4) Shortly after all of the above, I discovered a new issue that severely impacted the cluster. The n3048 switch would no longer auto-negotiate a 100Mbps Ethernet link. Our network watchdog device (iBoot) was continuously cycling the power on our Internet Ingress (ONT+ASA).
5) I spent even more time troubleshooting and resolving this issue (by locking the iBoot port to 100Mbps instead of leaving it on Auto).
6) I did not waste any more of my time by reporting this issue. The technician I worked with to upgrade these switches assured me that the firmware releases we used were "stable".