Recommendations for small unmanaged switch
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Hi All,
Seeking the wisdom of the community.
For some years now I have always recommended and bought Netgear when a small unmanaged switch was required. In that time I have only seen one fail, a GS116, but I think it suffered from some abuse TBH!
However I have recently started to notice the price of the D-Link equivalent 5 and 8 port desktop switches are getting seriously low. I bought a DGS-105, 5 port gigabit switch with metal enclosure, to test for £15 including postage.
So far it has been every bit as good as the Netgear. Doesn't get hot (or even warm) and just works. However it doesn't have the same warranty.
I was wondering what other people think about the D-Link desktop switches or any other make they could recommend?All comments welcome (within reason!).
Steve
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For small unmanaged switches, I like Netgear, D-Link and Linksys, in roughly that order. I have used Hawking, but not enough to form an opinion. And I now avoid TrendNet equipment like the plague… >:(
Of course, this is just my opinion. This and 3 bucks 50 will get you a cup of coffee...
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I had horrible luck with DLink up until about three years ago when our company bit the bullet and went Cisco. Would much prefer to use Netgear or the Linksys 'small business' stuff they market as Cisco. I have several GS108T that never have lost a beat. Did have one that had a faulty power plug that would wiggle loose. Just replaced it with a Linksys SE2800 (or whatever the model # used to be) and all is well.
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It's so subjective. I mean, the early 5 and 8 port GB Netgear switches suffered from a huge rash of bad capacitors, so that lowered my trust in them. At the same time, I run 3 Netgear switches at home, and they're great (but 2 are 24 port GB switches and one is a 24x10/100Mb+2GB, all with internal power supplies.)
On the UnRAID forums, some of the guys swear by TrendNet switches.
A lot of us get stung by a particular model and get turned off to a whole brand. That's not to say some brands aren't more prone to lemon models than others, be it through less stringent quality control or simply bad designs. That is a major source of the personal opinions, and why the seem to vary so widely.
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I lost faith in DLink when they published firmware that had a known issue of 'VLANs do not work'. Their next firmware that listed VLANs as one of the 'corrected issues' bricked our switches. Not much fun. So yes, that is when I was stung by DLink. Clearly I haven't gotten over it.
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Sure, I'm not a huge personal fan of D-Link either. I've had one that the metal grill over the ports popped out when a cable was yanked on, and not yanked all that hard. Apparently it was a known design issue with that model.
Also, within a single brand there can be a huge difference in the market segments they cover. Hence why Cisco bought Linksys, they didn't know how to make consumer oriented gear. HP seems to mainly make Enterprise-ish network gear.
But, some of those still follow through to the enterprise level. At work we have a lot of positively ancient HP switches that are still going strong, many of these are 10/100 only switches; we generally don't replace them because they died, but because we've outgrown them. At the same time we have a bunch of large D-Link 48port GB switches that seem to be dying left and right.
I often see ancient Cisco switches still rolling along just fine, (I'm talking 2950's, 2900XL's, etc.)
I see Dell switches with failing fans all the time, though. And large Netgear switches with the same noise.
But, again, I think we're looking more at the home markets, which I can't help you as much with.
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Thanks for the replies.
I agree that you cannot really assume a brand can provide equal quality across all market segments. It's almost certainly not the same factory producing 24port 10G layer3 switches as is 5 port desktop switches and probably not the same design team or software engineers. Indeed I imagine many of the big players probably re-badge a Chinese switch simply to be able to provide a product across the range. Also all companies will at one time or another end up producing something with a defect and i you happen to own that thing it can sway your opinion.
I have a had a number of frustrating experiences with D-Link routers from 3-4 years ago (?) that all had bad plug top PSUs.No one has actually experienced a problem with a DGS-105/8 though?
I just don't see enough hardware to really form an opinion in most areas.
Steve
Edit: typo
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I use a DGS-1016D here and have for a while. No issues at all.
Netgears I have lost ports on and one of the earlier Linksys gigabit 8 port switches had a fan go noisy early in its life. Later Linksys (fanless) Gigabit model here works flawless so far.
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I would certainly try to not get anything with a fan for home use.
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A small 16 port HP giga switch like this one. They are running flawlessly on the 3rd year here….
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/za/en/sm/WF25a/12883-12883-4172267-4172280-4172280-4220258.html?dnr=1
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A small 16 port HP giga switch like this one. They are running flawlessly on the 3rd year here….
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/za/en/sm/WF25a/12883-12883-4172267-4172280-4172280-4220258.html?dnr=1
If it fits your budget, yes, HP switches generally are good. The ProCurves generally have a lifetime warranty, too.
But… they're usually fairly expensive.
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Exactly. I've no complaints about the Netgear switches I have been recommending/deploying up to now. It's just that it seems you can now get equivalent functionality for significantly less. Of course the trade off is in the warranty. Netgear are now (since 2007) offering a 'lifetime warranty', though only 2 years on the PSU I notice, where as D-link look to be offering only 2 years on their non-smart switches in the UK. Though they offer 'limited lifetime warranty' in the US. ::)
Since I've never personally had to claim on the warranty this is a tough call.Not much in it. ;)
Steve
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Im in the same boat as you Steve!
Im looking for a 8 port switch maybe 100Mbps however are internet goes up to 120Mbps cable but i dont really mind not having up to 1Gbps as we dont file share on are network/VNC but we do have gaming consoles (PS3, Wii U, PC on steam) all connected at the sametime.
I would switch are ISP speed down to 60Mbps but we do use alot of Data from and to the WAN side but according to DD-WRT (when we borrowed one from upstairs) the total download speed was about 94Mbps/97Mbps and that was PS3 downloading a Demo about 3AM and Wii U updating at the time and the PC was using Facebook/Skype video chat 2 webcam face 2 face.
So really are household handles 97Mbps the max, Not sure about the PS3 demos/patches speed as the PSN network is slow at times anyway and wont beat the PC/Wii U speeds so what the point on 1Gbps switch?
Anyway if anyone can recommend me a Switch ill be grateful, Budget up to £50 pounds but was if my budget to go any higher then ill might get an Belkin 8 Port Switch F5D5131-8 just for now then maybe spring time ill upgrade the network with a PC tower. http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/Network-Switches-/51268/i.html
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Even if newegg doesn't ship to your country, it's still a good site to read reviews.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833156250
I have had this little gem sitting on my desk for a couple years now. Granted I never have all five ports jamming at 1gbps simultaneously but when I transfer something from A to B I get the proper speeds.
Seems like the 105/108 has ~30 people convinced they're solid little switches.
DGS-105
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817111038&Tpk=DGS-105DGS-108
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817111039&Tpk=DGS-108 -
ive been running a netgear gs116 for about 4 years now. its been solid, its quite (no fan), fast (gigabit was a requirement for me) lots of ports (16) and was super cheap. there was a flood of refurbs on ebay at the time and i got a pretty good deal.
i have a small 5 port dlink (dgs-1005d) as well, its functioned fine but is slow (despite being gigabit), but its getting pretty old now, 8 years or so.
