home gigE switches

[stevech]

Others' experiences in this are?

D-Link $50 gigE switch at home here. Hot. 4 months old it went berzerk and jammed out the LAN. Power supply failure.

Linksys $50 gigE switch. Hot. About 3-4 months old it began to refuse auto-negotiate to gigE on first one, then all ports. Run 100BT OK. Inside, slightly bulging 450uF capacitors. Best China has to offer.

Netgear $50 gigE switch. Not at all my idea of a trusted brand. Cooler. I'm at t+1 month.

I see lots of similar stories on these at newegg.

Newest consumer gigE switches are "green". Power off unused ports and ports with no link light. Save power. Run cooler. Unless all ports are used a lot.

Any good inexpensive 5 or 8 port gigE switches?

[bastafidli]

I have the d-link 5 port green gig-e switch and I am very happy with it. Running pretty cool. Running it so far for 6 month.

[robogeek]

I'd be interested to know if there are any affordable GigE switches out there that lasts significantly longer than a year. I've had Netgear and Linksys switches fail in the 11 to 13 month range. I'm on my 3rd GigE switch in just over three years (4th, if you count the last one I fixed myself). First there were problems with ports negotiating 1Gb connections and they would only work at 100Mb if I forced the NIC to 100Mb connections, and eventually they failed completely.

My first one was a Netgear ProSafe 8-port model that failed at around 13 months, but ran at 100Mb for several months after that before failing completely. It had a lifetime warranty until Netgear switched it to a limited warranty for the earlier revisions of the model I had I replaced it with a Linksys SD2008 8-port switch, and it failed after 11 months. RMA'd it, and the RMA replacement failed just recently after about 12 or 13 months. This time, I took it apart and replaced the failed capacitor myself. One of these days I'll have to dig out the Netgear ProSafe and fix that one up too.

[GKusnick]

My experience with the Netgear blue-metal-box switches is that they need to be kept cool. Put them in a closed cabinet with a bunch of other equipment and they will overheat and die. Keep them well ventilated and they'll last for years.

And of course for maximum lifespan all such equipment should be on a surge protector or UPS.

[matt91]

I've been through a couple of them in the past few years, so I decided to try a slightly more expensive one and see what happens (plus I needed more than 8 ports, and there wasn't much in that territory).

It's only been ~4 months so far, but nothing bad to report.



http://www.amazon.com/D-Link-24-Port.../dp/B0002TPFTA

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by matt91

I've been through a couple of them in the past few years, so I decided to try a slightly more expensive one and see what happens (plus I needed more than 8 ports, and there wasn't much in that territory).

It's only been ~4 months so far, but nothing bad to report.



http://www.amazon.com/D-Link-24-Port.../dp/B0002TPFTA

Nice price on a 24port.

[stanger89]

My GS608 (Netgear I think) has been working great for quite a while now, couple years I think. And it works fine with the extenders

[teststrips]

I also had trouble with a netgear 5 port failing to auto-negotiate gigabit speed (did this from the day I bought it... always thought it was a wiring problem). I recently switched to a Dlink DGS-2208 - which works fine with the same wiring at gigabit speeds.

[SWKerr]

I have several D-Link DSG-2205 switches that work well except for loosing two power supplies. (Probably storms, they were not on surge protectors at the time.) They would have some power but would not work. Using an older 10/100 power supply brought them back.

[loonsailor]

I have a couple of SMC switches (new http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00..._ya_oh_product and 3-year old http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00..._ya_oh_product), and a cheapo Netgear GS605v2. None has ever failed or caused trouble. The 16-port SMC runs fairly warm, but not excessively so. All three sit between my HD200 and my server, and I haven't noticed any issues.

[lpitman]

I've had two(2) Linksys switches fail. Been using Netgear now about a year...no problems (knock-on-wood).

[Menehune]

I've never liked the plastic case switches. I've only used the Netgear blue metal boxed switches. The only reason I upgraded a few years ago was to switch from a 4 port Gb switch to an 8 port Gb model. No problems.
Mine is sitting on the corner of my desk under my Linksys router, not shoved into an unventilated closet so they are relatively cool. All my electronics are plugged into a UPS.

[Skirge01]

I have 5 Netgear ProSafe 8-port switches in use, two at home (one in the hot attic) and three at work in a very large, warm warehouse, up by the rafters. All have been working fine for about 2 years now.

[jmv]

I use Netgear prosafe as well. I have 3~4 on my network. Lost 2 over about 5 years. One was in a hot attic, the other though was in a cool open office. I would recommend minimizing the number of switches since when they go bad they are not the first thing you think to trouble shoot. I've been lucky both times guessing "hey maybe it's the switch" and viola network issues solved...

mv

[stevech]

Originally Posted by jmv

I use Netgear prosafe as well. I have 3~4 on my network. Lost 2 over about 5 years. One was in a hot attic, the other though was in a cool open office. I would recommend minimizing the number of switches since when they go bad they are not the first thing you think to trouble shoot. I've been lucky both times guessing "hey maybe it's the switch" and viola network issues solved...

mv

I echo that. The symptoms of the D-Link gigE switch failure I had sent me on an awful and needless wild goose chase and wasted a lot of time. I won't do that one again.

On the desktop switches - don't stack anything on top of them. Then switch du jour here is a Netgear (yuck) 5 port sitting vertically and it's fairly cool.

I suspect that the guts of the Netgear ProSafe is the same as the plastic ones. The higher price covers their lifetime warranty costs for the ProSafe.

The gigE switches run a lot hotter. I guess the chips have more delta-v x delta-t to do.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by stevech

I guess the chips have more delta-v x delta-t to do.

If by that you mean more clock transitions per second, then yes. All else being equal, higher clock speeds mean higher power consumption, because current flows primarily when bits are being flipped, not when they're holding steady. So the more often you flip bits, the more current you draw.

It's the same reason why overclocking makes chips run hot: more bit flips per second.

[zoundz]

I have an Airlink101 5 port GBE switch that quit and has a couple of bulging caps. I'm sure replacing them will fix it. The cheap Chinese electronics industry is certainly suffering from an awful lot of short lifetime electrolytic caps. Cap deaths have always been with us, but we're seeing MTBF's of mere months for these miniature electrolytics. At least they're not like the old tantalums that used to explode and shear off half the components on the board. There's potentially a whole new cottage industry that's available now to just replace caps in cheap electronics. Unfortunately, the shipping charges would be more that the stuff is worth. More fodder for the recyclers, I guess.

Progress?!

[sic0048]

I've been using a LanTech 24 port 10/100/1000 switch that I bought over two years ago without any problems. It cost about $200 at the time. It is in a closet under my stairs and it gets pretty hot in there sometimes.

I liked it so much that I bought one for my parents house about a year ago. But a quick google search doesn't show any available anymore, so they must have stopped making them.

My suggestion would be to stop looking in the $50 range and bump up to something better even if it is more expensive. Some on this thread have already replaced their switches so often that they've spent as much as a lower end pro model.

[thomaszoo]

I am running the D-Link green switches (2) and they run nice and cool for me. No failures for me so far (over a year).

Wayne

[waynedunham]

I've got a D-Link 16 port DGS-1016D that I've had for several years and its still working fine. Even considering that I'm pretty sure one of the fans died (2 fans, one inside each side of the metal case) well over a year ago. One of the fans started making noise only a few months after I got it but since it was in the basement the only time you could hear it was when you went down to do laundry. Well after many months of that is stopped making noise so I'm guessing it finally just stopped.

Anyway, still working fine. I've got the whole house wired for Gig Ethernet and I'm running a Sage Server, Sage "client" (the old server with my old analog cards), 2 Sage HD-100 extenders, 2 HDHR's, Main PC, sometimes a laptop, 2 ReplayTV's and other assorted equipment.
I routinely record off all 4 HDHR tuners and an HD-PVR attached to my cable HD STB with no troubles besides the crappy signal from my Comcast cable. When I finally get around to having them come out and replace my incoming cable and/or fix the nearest amp for the 3rd time in 2 years that trouble will go away for a few more months. It's pretty bad when the signal on some channels is so bad the STB just sits there saying "your channel should be available shortly" while the HDHR's can get a signal, even though it suffers gaps, pixelation, audio drops, etc.