NETGEAR 5 Port Gigabit High Performance Desktop Switch (GS605) NETGEAR 5 Port Gigabit High Performance Desktop Switch (GS605)

Pros: Inexpensive

Cons: Bandwidth sucks. I connected two computers and the best throughput I could get was 1MBPS. It's basically useless if you need to move large amounts of data.

Pros: works just fine

Cons: a little large for a 5 port switch

Pros: It worked for a while!

Cons: Then it died, a few years later. Boo. Switches shouldn't just die. Shoddy!

Pros: Switch has been working fine

Cons: None

Pros: read cons.

Cons: The GS605 works great for what is does but, it's a RFI (Radio frequency Interference) generating hash box! If you need a switch for several computers in an RFI sensitive environment don't buy the GS605 it's just another chicom piece of junk. This is why I give the GS605 one egg.

Pros: I'm using this as a switch between my router and TV center. It works great for what I need. Plugged in an entertainment PC, xBox 360, TV, and satellite box to the network and works great. No issues in speed drops or disconnections from the internet or network.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: Good switch, a little overpowered for me since I'm not using it to the full potential but still great.

Pros: Inexpensive, worked well for 3 years

Cons: Failed after 3 years.
Did not stop working completely, just vastly degraded throughput, making it harder to identify it as the source of network issues.

Other Thoughts: My Netgear GS605 v2 worked well for a little over three years. Then I suddenly noticed problems streaming music and video from the NAS which connects to my home network using this switch. The transmission rate fell so low that music could only be streamed for a few seconds at a time before it had to be re-buffered. At first I suspected WiFi coverage issues at the player endpoints, but then I noticed that the one computer hardwired via the GS605 experienced significant performance degradation whenever accessing remote files. I thus tried circumventing the switch and all file transfer performance in our home network went back to normal. Since this switch cannot be configured, I have to assume it is broken. I just wish it had failed by stopping to function altogether. Since it degraded performance, this very basic switch was the last thing I checked after troubleshooting our WiFi, the player HW, player SW, NAS, and server SW.

Pros: Was cheap at the time

Cons: Ports on the switch stopped working just after the warranty ran out. Something as simple as a switch should last until it is obsolete.

Pros: Good switch (I have two), works well, gives me 900+mb/s sustained rate across my network.

Cons: Netgear customer support is horrid. The power supply on one of the switches died, and Netgear refused to replace it, even though it is still under the warranty period for the adapter. They even blew me off by giving me a non-existent 800 number to call.

Fortunately, I had an unused universal power adapter in the house; so the switch

Pros: Light. Inexpensive. Simple pnp operation.

Cons: Ceases to function after a couple years of used. I updated my home LAN to gigabit a while ago with two of these. I pulled one a while ago when I upgraded my router, but the one I kept in use died a slow death. The first sign was erratic recognition of connection speeds (over the course of a year - possibly due to poor controllers, or so I thought). A year later, the switch erratically identified connections at all when any connection was plugged-in/out. A month later, the switch ceased to recognize connections at all after I rebooted the computers. I swapped the unused switch with the problem child, and voila! It works like it should. No problems recognizing connections (or connection speeds).

Other Thoughts: A previous review mentioned something about poor cooling solutions for this device. I don't know enough about the thing to take it apart and modify the board, but I can say this is the first switch that *ever* died on me. I've changed 10/100 switches half a dozen times just for aesthetic purposes or in different environments. These are the only gigabit switches I've used. I'll try pretty much anything else before coming back to these.

3 eggs because it took about 3 years to die, but it worked as advertised for those first 2.5-3 years. I'm not sure how many home users/technophiles could resist fiddling/upgrading that long anyway, but this is definitely something I would not expect to *need* service or replacement.