The Sound of Silence

For the past couple of days my office has been blissfully, almost eerily silent. Silent like I’ve not heard in several years. It’s enough to make me want some kind of background sounds, which is something that I’ve never wanted previously.

This newfound silence has been brought about by a combination of things. It cool enough outside that the door is closed. The mighty Fujitsu Halycon air conditioner is taking a much needed break. Today, it’s not so cool that I need a heater.

Most significantly, I’ve turned off the 24-port Netgear switch that serves as our network core. The other day I swapped an older 10/100 switch into service so I could clean out the old Netgear unit. Racked and untouched for along while, it was terribly dusty inside & out.

This old Netgear GS524T has two built-in 40mm fans. They’ve been making noise forever. It’s been getting steadily worse. The 10/00 switch that I have as backup is fanless, so the familiar whine of the wee fans has been silenced for now.

In fact, according to my Netatmo Weather Station the ambient noise level in my home office is around 36 dba. That’s pretty quiet.

Just now, staring at the approaching holidays, I don’t really want to spend on a new & much better switch, so I think I will replace the fans in the old one. It’s a $20-30 project. I’m told that folks do this routinely in the case of Ubiquiti switches. They replace the noisy stock fans with quieter fans from Noctua.

On the other hand, a newer, unmanaged switch from Netgear is under $70. It’s not any better than the one I’d be replacing. Ok, it’s fanless, so it’s a little better.

It’s not the managed POE+ switch that I really want. That one has fans, too…but I’m told that they’re quiet. The manufacturer quotes 34 dbA.

Since we already use Ubiquiti AC Pro Wi-Fi access points & cloud key, a Ubiquiti switch would fit in well. Alas, now is simply not the time for such discretionary spending.

If you’re in need to holiday gift ideas for a geek in your life, I suggest the Netatmo Weather Station. I really like ours. More than I thought I would. In fact, we added the rain gauge not too long ago. It rained some overnight, as you can see.

I do enjoy the quiet, while it lasts.