Dell Networking N1524P PoE+ Switch

The Dell Networking N1524P is a 1U campus access switch with 24 RJ45 10/100/1000Mb auto-sensing ports that all support IEEE 802.3at PoE+ at up to 30.8W per port and four front 10GbE SFP+ ports, two of which can be reassigned as stacking ports. It moves 128Gbps of switch fabric at a 128Mpps forwarding rate, runs Dell EMC Networking OS6, and stacks up to four units under a single management address.

Where this switch belongs

This is wiring-closet hardware. Dell positioned the N-series at the IDF and MDF layer of a campus network - the switch that user ports, access points, phones and cameras plug into, uplinked over fibre or twinax to an aggregation layer. It is not a top-of-rack data centre switch and it is not trying to be: there are no 25G or 40G ports, the buffer is sized for access traffic rather than incast, and the whole design is built around port density per rack unit and low power draw rather than raw throughput.

Within that role it is a strong fit for offices, schools, clinics, warehouses and any site where the requirement is a few hundred gigabit access ports that are cheap to run and simple to manage. Because every port sources PoE+, one switch can carry the access layer and the powered devices attached to it without a separate injector or midspan anywhere in the closet.

PoE+ in practice

All 24 access ports source IEEE 802.3at PoE+ at up to 30.8W each. The integrated supply is rated 600W. At the 30.8W per-port ceiling, 24 ports works out to 739W of PoE demand - arithmetic from the per-port figure rather than a published Dell budget - so a closet full of high-draw devices will want the optional MPS1000 1000W external supply. For typical loads the integrated supply is sufficient on its own.

The per-port ceiling is a worst case that most deployments never approach. An 802.3af access point or an IP phone is a 15.4W class device at the sourcing end; only the heavier 802.3at devices - PTZ cameras, multi-radio Wi-Fi 6 access points, some video endpoints - get close to the 30.8W figure. The honest way to size this is to add up the actual class draw of the devices going on the switch rather than multiplying the port count by the ceiling. Do that and a 24-port switch typically supports a full complement of normal campus devices comfortably.

Uplinks, stacking and the trade-off between them

Four front 10GbE SFP+ ports give 40Gbps of uplink against 24Gbps of access capacity, a 0.6:1 ratio. Standalone, that means the uplink capacity actually exceeds the access capacity - there is no oversubscription at all.

There is a catch worth understanding before you design around it. The N1500 has no dedicated stacking ports. To build a stack it reassigns two of those four SFP+ cages as stacking ports, which is where the 40Gbps full-duplex stacking figure comes from. A stacked N1500 therefore has two SFP+ ports left for uplinks, not four, and the ratio moves to 1.2:1. Standalone, all four are yours. This single fact is the clearest reason to choose between the N1500 and the N2000: the N2024P keeps both of its uplinks in any stack size because its stacking ports are separate and at the rear.

The SFP+ ports take 10GbE SR, LR or ER optics, 1G SFP optics for a gigabit uplink, or SFP+ twinax direct attach cable. Note that stacking on this family uses ordinary SFP+ twinax between the reassigned ports - it does not use the dedicated stacking cable that the N2000 and N3000 use, because there is no port for one to plug into.

Routing: Layer 3 Lite, and what that excludes

The N1500 is a Layer 3 Lite platform. It routes IPv4 and IPv6 at line rate on every port, non-blocking, with 256 static IPv4 routes, 128 static IPv6 routes and 128 routing interfaces - but the only dynamic routing protocol it speaks is RIP. There is no OSPF on this family.

That distinction is worth stating plainly because the marketplace routinely describes these switches as either 'Layer 2' or 'Layer 3' and neither label is right. They are not Layer 2 switches - inter-VLAN routing works, and it works at line rate. They are also not full Layer 3 switches in the sense a network engineer would mean it, because you cannot bring one into an OSPF area. For a closet that routes between a handful of local VLANs and points a default route at the core, Layer 3 Lite is exactly enough. For a routed-access design, it is not, and the N2024 is the model that adds OSPFv2.

The switch supports 512 VLANs and 16K MAC addresses. That is sized for an access closet rather than an aggregation point, and is the other place the N1500 shows its position below the N2000.

Power, cooling and cord type

Power planning is the part of a PoE deployment people underestimate. The integrated supply is rated 600W and the switch draws up to 871W at full load with maximum thermal output of 2972 BTU/hr. That thermal figure is the one to give to whoever sizes the closet cooling, because it is an order of magnitude above what the non-PoE variant produces and a sealed wiring closet will notice.

The supply is integrated and not removable, so there is no second internal PSU to add. Redundancy on this family comes only from the optional external unit. Note also that this model requires a C15 power cord rather than the more common C13 - the inlet is the higher-temperature C16 type and a standard C13 cord will not seat in it. If a switch arrives and the cord in the rack does not fit, that is why.

Management and day-two operations

The switch runs Dell EMC Networking OS6, the shared N-series operating system, with dual firmware images held on-board so an upgrade can be rolled back without a console visit. Management is available through the CLI over console, Telnet or SSHv2, through the embedded web GUI, and through SNMP v1/v2c/v3 including Dell OpenManage Network Manager. USB auto-configuration is the feature most worth knowing about for multi-site rollouts: the switch will pull its configuration from a USB flash drive at boot, so a closet can be commissioned by someone who has never touched a switch CLI.

Access control is handled by authentication tiering, which lets you order 802.1X, MAC Authentication Bypass and Captive Portal on a single port so that a laptop, a printer and a guest device can all land on the same physical port and be treated differently. AAA authorization with TACACS+ accounting and RADIUS is supported, along with Private VLAN extensions and Private VLAN Edge for tenant separation, and RSPAN for monitoring a port from somewhere else in the Layer 2 domain without a dedicated tap.

Choosing between this and its siblings

• N1524 - the same switch without PoE. If nothing on the closet needs powering, this saves the bulk, the heat and the C15 cord requirement.
• N1548P - the 48-port version of the same switch. Port count is the only meaningful difference within a family apart from the fabric and forwarding figures that scale with it.
• N2024P - the N2000 equivalent. Adds OSPFv2, 4,094 VLANs, a 32K MAC table, MLAG and a twelve-unit stack over dedicated rear ports, at the cost of two SFP+ ports instead of four.

A secondary-market-only platform

Dell has retired the N-series from its own catalogue. The N1100, N2200 and N3200 series pages on Dell's store now redirect to the Dell homepage, and no N1500 or N2000 model appears in Dell's current switching line-up at all. That has a practical consequence for anyone standardising on this platform: there is no new-unit channel to buy from, so refurbished hardware is not the budget alternative here, it is the only supply. It also means spares planning matters more than it would on a current platform. Buying a cold spare alongside the production units is the normal approach, and it is worth doing while the model is still plentiful.

Every unit we ship is tested and supplied with warranty. Configuration, cabling and optics are all commodity items on this generation, which is part of why the platform remains a sensible campus choice rather than a compromise.