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I have a few 3Com Baseline 2824 SFP Plus gigabit switches, 3C16487. These are apparently also known as HP JE738A (after HP bought up 3Com) though mine are not badged that way. One does need to find this out to get any useful results from the HP website.

The Management software they came with was 1.0.0.7 - I just got them updated to the latest I could find 1.0.1.1 though it felt like I was crawling through a cobwebby basement at HP's website to find that. The download file is a windows .exe self-extracting archive...

Unfortunately, the new management software does not solve my biggest issue in using these switches many places - a terrible VLAN implementation, where ports are EITHER "desktop" and untagged and only on one VLAN, or they are "Uplink" and everything is tagged. I frequently have need of "this VLAN tagged and this VLAN not tagged" on a given port, so this limitation makes them far less useful than a Baseline 2948 I have that does manage the tagged/untagged concept – presumably a major difference between the 2800 and 2900 series.

I suspect that's as good as they can manage, and I'll just have to find them homes where they can be "one step above a dumb switch," but I thought I'd ask if anyone knew otherwise, in case it turned out I was missing anything.

Responding to comment: Is there any way (firmware version I have not located, etc.) to get a more modern approach to VLANs on this model of switch, where ports can be tagged or untagged on different VLANs, rather than this extremely limited approach to VLANs where certain ports are "uplinks" and all traffic is tagged, while other ports are "desktop", limited to one VLAN, and untagged only?

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  • Could you be more specific about the exact question that you want answered?
    – Mike Pennington
    Nov 1, 2014 at 22:44
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    The manual on the HP website for the 2824-sfp plus is very depressing and I can feel your pain. It appears the switch does not provide the advanced management features you seek... and the last firmware is dated 23-Aug-2006, that is old. I would recommend to retire these switches and invest into enterprise switches that supports the feature sets your environments requires. Guess there will be no firmware hack available for these really old switches.
    – user4565
    Nov 5, 2014 at 19:38

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Answering mostly so this stops popping up as unanswered: There appears to be no way forward for these switches, indeed.

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