The network design is a question here too. Putting a dumb switch in front of your firewall (s) just moves the point of failure from the single firewall to a single switch.

1 – No Root Bridge Configured Many organizations take spanning tree for granted and simply accept the default configuration settings. This leaves all switches in the environment using the ...

Encouraging the migration of gigabit Ethernet to the edge of the enterprise network, Cisco Systems Inc. is launching two fixed-configuration switches.