Question 1

Is this POE.?

Accepted Answer

Looking on d-link's web site, it appears that this particular switch is not POE, however they do offer a DGS-1100-08P which does provide power over the internet.

Question 2

Will this log Web Addresses visited?

Joe S

Accepted Answer

No, this unit will not perform that task as it requires the ability to read the packets up to Layer 3 at least (or the IP address).  This unit even in managed mode is Layer 2 only so it is designed to forward traffic.  It DOES, however, have a management feature which indicates it is capable of holding a configuration and CAN be logged into (otherwise you can't configure it).

Now what is interesting is that this unit supports port mirroring.  That would allow you to mirror one of the physical interfaces (such as the uplink into your router) and duplicate all its traffic to another interface that could be connected into a computer or device designed to perform the task you are speaking of.  Monitor the network.  A version 2 or later Raspberry PI should be capable of handling this with some extra storage space.  Anything that had enough space, a 1Gbe connection, and is capable of running either wireshark or tcpdump could perform the task of collecting the information.  The actual monitoring would need software or someone to go in and check it.  Most of the higher end Wireless AC consumer routers have this type of inspection/monitoring feature natively at this point though.

Question 3

Will this support VLAN trunking?

Accepted Answer

It supports port trunking but not the official LACP.  It kinda worked on the dual LAN ports of my desktop when I was testing, it did not work with my home NAS.  Just remember that port trunking and link aggregation will not double your normal throughput.  What it does do is allow multiple requests to a  device to be serviced simultaneously, e.g. multiple movie streams etc.  So, I think it's only useful for use with a server or servers.  If that is the case, this is probably not the box you want.  Hope this answers your question.

Question 4

I'm unfamiliar with D-link switches as I only work with Cisco equipment, but can any of the ports be converted from layer 2 into layer 3 routed interfaces & assigned ipv4/ipv6 addresses?  And if it doesn't have layer 3 features, how does it handle vlan traffic; do you need a separate layer 3 device to handle the routing of vlan traffic between ports or can this switch perform atleast those layer 3 functions?

Accepted Answer

It is not possible to convert into a Layer 3 interface on this type of device.  This is Layer 2 only, which means that VLAN tagging (also known as Dot1Q tagging) is being used to segment the different networks.  How this works is you configure the ports to either participate in one or multiple VLANs and depending on the device connected at the other end you set one or multiple of the VLANs to tag on egress (or exit).  Thus a 4-byte field is added to packets associated with that VLAN when leaving the switch.  If the other end does NOT have that VLAN set as tagged, which means we expect that 4-byte field to be there for that VLAN's packets, the packet will end up being dropped by that device as it doesn't understand what to do with it.

Now, how does the switch know which device is part of which VLAN?  This is based upon a table the switch keeps and basically one of the primary tables it uses to function, the MAC address table.  When a device first connects it sends out a packet (grat-arp) letting the switch know it's hardware or MAC address.  This in turn is associated with either A) the untagged VLAN set for that port or B) the tagged VLAN if the system is setup to send the traffic tagged and the switch is set to receive communication from that port for that VLAN as tagged, and that VLAN, MAC address, and interface are input into the MAC table which the switch references when one devices wishes to speak to another.  There's a lot more to Layer 2 beyond this obviously, but that should give a general idea of how devices are classified by a switch into different VLANs.  For the majority of home networks, the most that is needed is more ports, which is exactly what this device is truly designed for.  They've added a few things to appeal to very small businesses such as VoIP and Security mode (relying on QoS tags and IGMP snooping), both of which are simply to set those traffic streams at a higher priority for sending so there is less errors for those devices.

Question 5

I assume this uses a power adapter. What is the output of that adapter? Is it 12 volt?

Accepted Answer

The power adapter is rated 5VDC, 1A, positive in the center.

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