What's good for really cheap gigabit, redundant, high throughput
Well .. I'd say you could pick any two of those and come up with a list
.. but we use Packeteer (now owned by Bluecoat) to great success. It
fails the first requirement miserably, IMHO, though.
I've also used these in a MDU setting, but certainly not at gigabit
speeds : NetEqualizer - Data Sheets, Features, Benefits
They claim models are available up to 5gbps ($11k). 1gbps is ~$9k.
Cheers,
Michael Holstein
Cleveland State University
Autoneg is a required part of the gig E specification so you'd only be
causing yourself trouble by turning it off. (I don't know if
it'll also break automatic MDI/MDI-X (crossover) configuration, for
an example of something that's nice to have.)
At least on 450x series enhanced linecards, disabling autonegotiation disables auto MDI/MDI-X. You have to enable autonegotiation but you can provide specified offered and acceptable parameters, eg: "speed auto 100" to enable autonegotiation but only allow negotiation of 100 mb. (speed auto 10 100 / speed auto 1000 / etc)