I'm the CEO of a computer compnay which has been trading for over a year. Because of that job I have...
I'm the CEO of a computer compnay which has been trading for over a year. Because of that job I have to stay up to date with computer technology and products (you probably guessed that from the reviews I have written).
Member since:30.11.2005
Reviews:6
Members who trust:2
There isn't much you can normally say about a Network Switch and what you can say is already spoken for.
The GS108 has 8-ports which all Gigabit enable (1000Mb/s or 125MB/s) which all have embedded LEDS in. The right hand one lights up if the connection is operating at 10/100 Fast Ethernet and the left LED lights up if the connection is at 1000 Gigabit. The LEDs blink with activity.
Also the left of the ports there is another two LEDs per port, the top row lights up with collision (I have never seen any yet) and the bottom if the link is active. Finally there is a Power LED on the far left.
The GS106 is inside a very nice metal case which gives it its excellent quality as most switches come in a horrible plastic case. Its painted a very smart blue and would not look out of place anywhere.
It is very small and as it has no fans it doesn't produce any noise at all, its also very cool which is something Linksys switches have a problem with. It comes in a smallish box with only a few bits of paper, the AC wallsocket and a wall-mounting kit which is a nice addition.
Installation as always is very easy, plug mains in, plug ethernet cables in and your set, it will never let you down, doesn't need restarting or anything, so more of a 'Plug and Forget' peripheral.
What does Gigabit mean? well it means that it will take a lot less time to transfer information or enable more connections and transfer. All the ports are Full-Duplex which means they support 1Gbps up and down at the same time. On 100Mbps connection it would take you at maximum speed 6.4 minutes to transfer a DVDs worth of information. On 1Gbps however it would only take you 38 seconds.
Now in theory you won't always get your maximum speed as it will depend on more things than this switch such as cable type and the network cards installed in the comptuers on the network.
The other question might be why should I buy Gigabit when I only have a Fast Ethernet network? Well you should buy Gigabit because it is future proof and it is now affordabe. You might not have any Gigabit enabled devices at the moment but you will, most new motherboards are now shipping with Gigabit as standard. Not long ago this swtich was twice to three times the price it is now and there has never been a better time to upgrade.
Overall this is an excellent product, 8-ports are more than enough for most houses and have room for expansion and with the reliability it offers you can hide it away and forget about it.
Well Done Netgear on and truly wonderful piece of equipment.
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Well 802.11n will offer a great increase over 802.11g and will work at 108Mbps this is nothing compared to this wired swtich which offers a full 1000Mbps. This is also possible where as with the wireless connection it depends much more on the product and the area that it is in.
I have had a number of wireless switches and have decided they are no good for anything but surfing the internet around the house. Transfering large files around even an 125Mbps MIMO Wireless router can take much longer than a normal 10/100 network.
On your second question this switch is unmanaged yes, so it does not support VLANs, MAC addressing or any other features. It is aimed at the house, small office environment, but does work on larger scales.
LegendaryMrDude 03.12.2005 00:02
with the flexibility and increasing performance of wireless (802.11n will offer 108Mbps) the days of copper switches are probably numbered. Presumably there isn't any management or configuration capability in this switch (support for VLANs etc)? Sam.
Now you can have a powerful, high-speed network on a small scaleNETGEAR's GS108 Gigabit ... more
Ethernet Switch lets you build a system that provides a full, dedicated 1000, 100, or 10 Mbps connection so you can move very large files across your network instan...
Postage & Packaging: £16.00 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
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