NETGEAR 8 Port Gigabit Ethernet Managed Network Switch

Super easy to install, and the app is very good too.

Currently im using it to connect my home server to the router and so far i havent see any dips in performance. File trasnferes as well as internet speeds remain incredibly fast and stable just as they would as being connected directly to the router. The only tiny bad thing about this switch that i have noticed is that my ping has increased by 1 – 2 ms which is to be expected but it has no effect on day to day use.

In order to understand the benefits of a managed switch you need to understand the difference between a hub and a switch. A switch routes traffic to specific devices through specific ports – i.e. traffic that’s flowing to device A through port 1 on the switch won’t be visible on the other ports e.g. to device B through port 2. Great for network traffic. A problem if you want to monitor the traffic to and from a specific device to do some tracing and diagnostics.

I was looking to do some network diagnostics and this “managed” GS105E has a great facility to mirror ports, so you can get it to copy the traffic going through Port 1 over to port 2, and then plug a laptop running Wireshark into port 2 to see what’s happening to and from port 1.

In a business environment you might use a network “tap” for this but for the home user, spending an extra 5 to get the “E” version of the GS105 / 108 gives you a similar (and excellent) facility.

Netgear switches stand the test of time too. As far as I can determine the main difference between the GS105/108 and 305/308 is the warranty. I’ve never had a Netgear switch fail in my home environment and some have been running continuously for over 10 years.

Recommended

As per the headline because the two I now have to connect to my remote Synology DS218J NAS and attached Yottomaster 4-bay HDD box, are providing much higher data transfer rates than the previous two basic GS308s (and the similar TP link units before those) – and that’s without actually getting into the remote setups to tweak the parameters (because I’ve not been well)

Despite the mesh wi-fi system I have installed in my home, I still like to have a good wired connection for some devices and I needed a small edge switch to reach into a corner of the house so I could connect up a couple of devices that had no wireless capability. As I’m a bit of a Netgear fanboy and have several of their managed switches already, I opted for this particular model, which at the time was cheaper than the roughly equivalent GS105E.

Setting up is straightforward enough, and if you wanted you could just connect this to your network and do nothing else with it. But if you’re going to do that, I’d strongly recommend you go for a cheaper unmanaged one as you’re basically paying for things you’re not using with this. As I like to keep a close eye on my network setup and plan to extend to using the VLAN functions at some point (mainly to segregate my home automation system), this was pretty much the best solution.

They’re great switches, but they aren’t the easiest to work with. One of the issues I’ve noted is that they don’t grab IP addresses from DHCP quickly enough, so they tend to go with their default IP address, which is 192.168.0.239. I don’t use a subnet which this address falls into, so it’s not a big issue, but if your network does then you may well find you’ve got an address conflict. Not ideal. And if you buy more than one, you could end up with issues. Again, I believe the unmanaged switches don’t have this issue as there’s no need for them to have an IP address, so if you’re not planning on doing anything to these then look for something else.

There is an inbuilt web interface which is used to change the various settings, from the password (hint: change this straight away!), to per-port VLAN, QoS, mirroring and a multitude of other options. The interface looks like it was designed in the mid 1990s, but it’s pretty clean and agile, so it’s not a chore to work with and once set up, you’re probably never going to look at it again. On the downside, it does miss out on some of the enhanced features of its bigger brothers (the ones with 16 or more ports), but a 5 port edge switch is hardly going to be the backbone of a complex network purely because there’s not enough ports, so this shouldn’t be a problem.

The switch is made of metal and is very sturdy. It’s finished in a deep grey colour and looks very understated and unobtrusive, with the sole exception of the oversize Netgear logo on the top. It is fanless, so it is silent in operation and it generates very little heat, being barely warmer than room temperature. It throws network packets around with aplomb and despite being three hops from the router, there’s virtually no slowing down of the data rate.

The only problem I have with this switch is that I should probably have got the 8 port one instead, as I’ve filled this one already. But aside from my own lack of foresight, this was a very worthwhile purchase.