NETGEAR GS108T-100NAS Smart Gigabit Smart Switch

Pros: Works as advertised. I experienced no problems setting it up. I specifically bought it to have a small switch capable of port mirroring to take into the field to monitor a problem piece of equipment. I just set it up to mirror ports 1 and 2 to port 8. I then go the the problem equipment and plug the original Ethernet cable into port 1 and attach a short jumper from port 2 back to the equipment being monitored. I then attach my laptop running wireshark to port 8 and instant monitoring of both TX and RX traffic. Yes I know that you can do this with managed switches without resorting to a trip to the field but this involves getting IT involved and they generally work 9-5 and are adverse to letting contractors into their switches. This way I can work alone and get things done! This solution is considerably cheaper that any of the commercial port monitoring tools I could find. It does add an addition hop but this is seldom a problem.

Cons: I agree with the other reviewers that would prefer rear mounted connectors with front mounted LEDs. Rack mount switches should be front-front, table top switches should be rear-front.

Pros: Has many great features, many of which I have not used yet. Price was right. Easy to use interface. Transfers seem to be plenty fast, though I have not worked it too hard yet.

Cons: Resets when touched, if not connected properly (see below). The rebate that it references does not seem to be available on the rebate website. I will check back later, or contact them, maybe they are just slow updating the system. It is still a decent price even without the rebate.

Overall Review: I thought I had a defective one at first. Every time I touched it it would reset itself - quite annoying. Seems to be from static electricity. Other users have experienced this and sent it back, but you don't need to do this, there is an easy fix. The grounding screw on the back of the unit just needs to be connected to ground. I just cannibalized an old 3 prong plug, and stole the ground pin. I soldered a wire to this, and connected the other end to the ground terminal. I plugged the pin into an unused outlet ground (the round hole at the bottom) and it works perfectly. I can now touch it all I want, even shock it with enough static electricity that it hurts my finger, and it never resets.

Pros: Very cool in operation. Silent (fanless) operation. Jumbo frames supported. Easy browser interface controls.

Cons: Minimal technical documentation.

Overall Review: Paired this unit with an older version Netgear GS108 without the "smart-switch" features. I get transfers of 37-50 MB/sec coming off my nearly full 4-drive SATA3.0G array on the server to my local SATA3.0G drive in my PC, which is about twice the speed of my previous D-Link DGL-4300 router's built-in 4 port GB switch.

Pros: Works great, fast for jumbo packet fans, more features than I really need but who knows... some day perhaps! I agree with the "knows more about tcp/ip than me" comment. Also seems to have fixed my issue with vista burning 1 cpu on startup (related to packet fragmentation, I believe). Tripled my jumbo packet large file transfer speeds!

Cons: note that out-of-the-box, jumbo frames are turned off, so you may have to change your nic settings before configuring it if you are using it to replace your jumbo-compatible switch. This cost me a few more minutes of setup time. (minor issue) you can only clear counters for one port at a time, not all at once. (minor issue) ntp setting requires IP addresses, dns names would have been much more convenient (like pool.ntp.org). (moderate issue)

Overall Review: I really didn't know what I was missing. Having visibility into your switch and the ability to disable flow-control for boxes you don't have admin abilities for is priceless to me! If I had waited a week I would have saved $5 :)

Pros: Cheap for a managed switch. Switching fabric enough to handle all ports simultaneously. Runs cool and has no fans. So many features to play with.

Cons: Web interface could have been a lot better. No serial port configuration.

Overall Review: I bought this for my setup at home. Why spend this much on a home switch when there are gigabit switches for half the price? I needed the vlans, but also, the switching fabric is a big part. This does support jumbo frames, but I don't use them. Works right out of the box with no config.

Pros: Current uptime on my switch: "230 days 12 hours 12 mins 43 seconds" This switch has never faltered, and I'm *not* just surfing the web through it. I'm pushing 3-5 terabytes through this switch per week. VLAN, SNMP, GIGABIT, QOS, rate-shaping!!!

Cons: Does not come with free cheeseburger.

Overall Review: ALL the other switches in my network are either c isco or netgear, and I honestly believe the folks that are complaining of issues with this switch have mixed it with inferior networking gear. Your network is only as good as the WEAKEST link. That $12 switch you found at your local grocery store WILL turn your network into a big steaming pile of fail. Just say no. Use ONLY quality networking gear, like THIS switch.

Pros: This is very likely the cheapest price per port switch out there with full 1gig + vlan support. It does ( despite claims that it does not) fully support IEEE 802.1Q vlan BUT you have to select it … by default it is set to port-based vlans.

Cons: Power to this switch is a bit funky. YOU MUST connect the grounding tab (on the back … little silver screw) to ground OR your switch will (reset/reboot or reset defaults randomly) when touched…. This happens more with static. I use a small copper wire connected into the back of my server case (it solved all the rebooting issues and I once again love this switch).

Overall Review: Its not cisco … so if your trying to learn “Cisco Certified…. Anything” this will not help much. It has a (so so) web UI that gets the job done but you have to learn it (and knowing this UI likely wont help with your job advancement. ) It is a great switch to “learn” VLANS with IMO.

Pros: Great small VLAN switch that works well with VLAN, port untagging. It is amazing this little switch can do

Cons: It says opensource, so that you can build its own firmware on Linux. But Netgear did not provide complete source, so that building the firmware is not possible.

Overall Review: I wish they truly open their source so that user can change some functions if they want