NETGEAR ProSafe FS524 - switch - 24 ports

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Very fast
Ease of Installation	Excellent - very quick and easy
Ease of use	Very easy
Reliability	Excellent
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Reliable, functional and cheap, easy to use
Disadvantages:	None

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

After writing about my "Emergency Switch" last week, I feel it only fair that I tell you about my workhorses" that sit in my server cupboard here at work.

Yes, again we have gone the "netgear" route because their equipment is highly regarded in the networking world and competitively priced.
It is also well supported throughout the world by a well educated helpdesk team who have always solved my problems in the past ( look at the Modem Router solution I wrote about for Netgear).

Now before I go any further, let me explain a bit about a switch for those of you that are now thinking im writing about something that turns lights on and off!

If you have more than 2 computers connected together, you basically have a network of computers. These computers need to have a central location like a set of traffic lights so information can flow between one computer to another. A hub and a switch basically perform the functions of a set of traffic lights on your network. A switch is normally used in a larger office and connected directly to your servers via an uplink cable. Then all of the desktop users are plugged into the switch itself to access the server resources.

Clearer? Good!

So when it came time to install our new network early last year, the Netgear catalogue was the first and only place I was going to look.

Reason being?

For our network requirements, Netgear was going to provide everytihng we needed. Reliability, 100mbps network support, good price and easy to understand and install.

There are others on the market such as Cisco but these were more than double the price as they are tailored more towards companies requiring high volume networks with managed switches. D-Link are another company offering a range of switches but are again pricey and not as reliable.

So to keep our network as uniform as possible, we opted originally for 5 of these switches.

Installation is simple. Opening the box reveals 2 handy brackets, complete with tiny screws. If anytihng, these are the worst and best parts about the Netgear system. Having detachable brackets means that this switch is just at home sitting on a desktop somewhere as it is in a Switch Cabinet. The brackets allow you to mount the switch inside a cabinet with relative ease.
However, I do emphasise the word TINY when talking about the screws. The black phillips headed screws are quite difficult to do up and its easy to cross thread them due to their size. Careful you dont do this or it may prove difficult to get it to sit tidy in the cabinet.

Once the headache of putting it in the switch cabinet is out of the way, its plain sailing. However, remember to plug in the mains cable to the rear of the switch BEFORE you bolt it in. Its difficult to reach to the back unless you have a cabinet that opens on all sides or if like us, the back faces a wall!

All of the network sockets and connections are located on the front of this switch so it means no further fiddling around the back once it is installed. Handy if you need to make any networking changes to the configuration.

On the older models (pre last summer) there was a button located on the Right hand side that allowed users to select between Uplink and normal perfomance on the 24th port. This means that the last port can be used for linking to the main server if needed. However, this has all become autmated on the post summer 2003 models as they are all now "auto uplink" capable.

The switch itself is a very clever bit of equipment. It operates its own internally sensing for all of the 24 ports and works out the loads and connections speeds on a per port basis. This means it is not something you as the user needs to worry about and makes managing the system much easier.

In fact you could not want for an easier set up. There is no software to install. There are no drivers to install. You simply add the switch to your network by plugging it into the server. Simple.

If you do get stuck, Netgear are only too eager to help. We have had issues in the past with other hardware and they resolved these for us. This was for hardware that had drivers so even this is not likely to affect you.

Stability?
Fantastic. I have no packet collisions which basically means no data flying around getting lost or preventing other information getting through.

Pricing?
Well thanks to the next generation in connection speed (gigabit) which is 10 times faster, these have dropped in price. I nfact, you can now get these for under £100 online from places such as Kelkoo and dabs.

Overall?
Fantastic value and easy to use. The brackets can be fun to install and its not utilising the next generation of connection (fibre and gigabit) but for a current office with current technology, it is a great solution to try.