[tw04]

A lot of newer 10Gbe switches won't go to 100mbit. If you don't have gigE you aren't getting plugged in in a lot of datacenters nowadays.

[jhallenworld]

This reminds me that we used to use these network power switches: http://dataprobe.com/iboot.html

The problem with them is that they use just an 8051 microcontroller (talking to an ethernet controller over a parallel port)! Arp and other broadcast background traffic on modern networks overwhelms them.

[mschuster91]

Oh, thanks for the info. I thought all that stuff was backwards compatible...

[scurvy]

The Broadcom Trident 2/+ chipsets, that a lot of vendors use for their merchant silicon, only support 1, 10, and 40 gig PHY's. No more 10/100 on these switches (which are all over every datacenter).