A few years ago we upgraded our wired network at home to do Gigabit Ethernet throughout the house, an upgrade I have loved since the day we did it. We used a Netgear ProSafe 16 Port Gigabit Switch (GS116 v1) as the main switch in our wiring closet, and D-Link “Green” DGS-2205 and DGS-2208 gigabit switches in our offices. Network speeds have been blazing fast and the convenience of plugging gear into any room and having fast access to the rest of the house has been wonderful.
Sadly, the Netgear GS116 died this past weekend. Completely dead. Power light comes on, but all 16 ports do not respond when plugged into anything. I am pretty sure it’s out of warranty so I am shopping around for a replacement switch and would like a few more ports so I am in the market for a 24 port switch.
The good news is that D-Link’s “Green” lineup of switches, routers, and hubs now includes 16 and 24 port managed and unmanaged switches! Hurrah! I have not put the new stuff on a Kill-A-Watt to measure, but our existing DGS-2205 and DGS-2208 sip very little power (about 1/10th that of the 4 and 8 port 100baseT switches they replaced).
The question is, should I go managed or stay unmanaged for cheaper up front costs?
D-Link DGS-1224T is ~$250 from NewEgg, and supports 802.1q VLANs, SNMP, Link Aggregation, Port Mirroring… wow… VLANS at home!
D-Link DGS-1024D is ~$160 from NewEgg, and is unmanaged simplicity and efficiency…
Are there other switches/routers I should be looking at?
Update: Dan Bradley points out that getting two or three 8 port switches is both cheaper and an effective way to reduce the impact of failure when it happens. Thanks Dan, excellent point!
D-Link DGS-2208 are less than $50 each at NewEgg. Three of them is still less than even the cheap switch listed above, and could buy me some of the flexibility of VLANS by having physically separate LANs. I owe Dan a beer.
Post a Comment