Good Switch Advise Needed

[jogl]

I would like to buy a few 8 port switches. I don't need anything fast or fancy or new.

But having, by chance, purchased a good switch I would like some more that are of a similar calibre.

I have a bunch of devices on a fairly extensive LAN, mostly data collection and monitoring around the farm.

I have a few D Link and other similar cheapy switches. Sometimes when the power is interrupted those switches have to have the power cycled again to come on line.

I bought a Ubiquiti Tough Switch from the on line classifieds and have discovered that it is far superior to the D Links, etc. It always powers up on line even though it is at the end of a very long Cat5 run that the other switches would simply not work on.

What are some other older 8 port switches that will be for sale used that I could buy that are of similar quality as the Ubiquiti? (Preferably no fan cooling)

Thanks,
JP.

 

[coxhaus]

It is hard to beat the 8 port D-Link switches for price. I installed 3 at my daughter's small business and they work well. We have never lost power at my daughter's business so I have no comment on the power cycle. There is a lot of equipment if you don't give it adequate power you will have problems. Fry's has the D-Link switches for $23. I don't think you are going to beat that.

I buy a lot of used Cisco small business switches. They work great. From my reading it seems like the Cisco switches sure are more straight forward on setting up VLANs so I would rate them a little higher than Ubiquiti. Plus Cisco has layer 3 switches which probably scale higher.

 

[CaptainSTX]

I have three TP-Link 8 Port switches in my network. (2 SG108 , 1 SG108E)

One of them is powered using a POE injector and the other two using the wall warts. I have never had a problem with any of them rebooting after a power outage.

The oldest switch has three years of continious service and it is mounted in a small wiring cabinet with no ventalation and it continues to do its job. It switches all the traffic between my TIVOs on the LAN so it probably handles a TB of LAN traffic many days.

 

[thiggins]

I use all TP-Link gigabit switches, mostly 8 port. Good value for the money, including their PoE models.

And no, I don't get them free from TP-Link.

 

[sfx2000]

I use all TP-Link gigabit switches, mostly 8 port. Good value for the money, including their PoE models.

Their unmanaged switches are a good value...

If you need a lightly managed switch, look at Netgear's GS-108T series - 8 ports, lightly managed, under $100USD...

 

[System Error Message]

dlink switches even the unmanaged ones can be unreliable. If im on a budget i'd look at netgear prosafes or tplink, if not cisco has good switches in their sg line. If you're adventurous you can go with mikrotik as well if you want a fully managed switch at a low price. The only thing with netgear prosafes and tplink is that sometimes their semi managed switches have bugs but if using either of the semi managed switches as unmanaged they work well and the hardware is reliable.

 

[umarmung]

It depends on your budget. I would recommend managed over unmanaged due to the likely distances involved ("farm") and monitoring.

8-12 port, fanless and silent models:

• Managed: Juniper, HP/Aruba, Cisco, Mikrotik, Ubiquiti Edgeswitch Lite/Unifi, Zyxel, D-Link
  
• Unmanaged: Netgear (GS108v4 has good hardware design), Zyxel, TP-Link

While I think the best value are Cisco switches due to the variety, feature support and reliability, I think in your situation, all you may need are a handful of Mikrotik RB260GS - they run the considerably easier to configure SwOS rather than RouterOS.

 

[microchip]

I used to use 3 TP-Link switches (8 ports) until their power supply got flaky and two of the three switches failed. I moved away to NETGEAR ones and so far they perform as expected. Compared to TP-Link, they're a bit more expensive but all my NETGEAR switches have a metal casing instead of plastic for the TP-Link. I recommend both brands, though, with NETGEAR ones slightly in favor

 

[CaptainSTX]

I used to use 3 TP-Link switches (8 ports) until their power supply got flaky and two of the three switches failed. I moved away to NETGEAR ones and so far they perform as expected. Compared to TP-Link, they're a bit more expensive but all my NETGEAR switches have a metal casing instead of plastic for the TP-Link. I recommend both brands, though, with NETGEAR ones slightly in favor

The TP-Links I referenced in my response to the OP have metal cases. If you don't have a spare 9V power supply for that will work with a TP-Link in your bucket of wall warts replacements can be fountd for US$5 - US$15 on line or Walmart.

 

[System Error Message]

TP link switches may not be bug free but are still a consideration on a budget. But if you are considering PoE at least get semi managed and consider netgear at minimum.

 

[microchip]

The TP-Links I referenced in my response to the OP have metal cases. If you don't have a spare 9V power supply for that will work with a TP-Link in your bucket of wall warts replacements can be fountd for US$5 - US$15 on line or Walmart.

I know, must have hit a bad power adapter batch - all 3 adapters developed a high pitch noise that was only noticeable when you went close to the adapter and the noise got louder when the switches were under stress. Also, as I mentioned 2 of the 3 switches failed shortly after. No idea what happened, they just stopped switching so I needed to replace them and went for NG this time. The 2 that failed had plastic casing, the one that still works has metal casing (just saying, not implying anything)

 

[Trip]

The SMB stuff will usually work fine for home or small office: Cisco Small Business, Netgear ProSafe, TP-Link, TrendNet, D-Link, etc. Mikrotik CRS and UBNT EdgeSwitch are also fun to play with, but I wouldn't consider either of them enterprise-ready (...yet).

For value enterprise-class, I'd look at certain upper-end models of Cisco SB and Netgear ProSafe, or most of the lines from HPE, Adtran and/or Allied Telesis.

Note - I know it's overkill for this thread, but you can also land some pretty sweet refurb Cisco Catalyst or Brocade ICX (now Ruckus ICX) off eBay if you pay close enough attention.

 

[coxhaus]

The D-Link 8 port switches are now $19 on sale at Fry's. I drove over and bought another one for my daughter's small business.

 

[jogl]

Thanks for all the info guys.

JP.

 

[System Error Message]

The SMB stuff will usually work fine for home or small office: Cisco Small Business, Netgear ProSafe, TP-Link, TrendNet, D-Link, etc. Mikrotik CRS and UBNT EdgeSwitch are also fun to play with, but I wouldn't consider either of them enterprise-ready (...yet).

For value enterprise-class, I'd look at certain upper-end models of Cisco SB and Netgear ProSafe, or most of the lines from HPE, Adtran and/or Allied Telesis.

Note - I know it's overkill for this thread, but you can also land some pretty sweet refurb Cisco Catalyst or Brocade ICX (now Ruckus ICX) off eBay if you pay close enough attention.

The D-Link 8 port switches are now $19 on sale at Fry's. I drove over and bought another one for my daughter's small business.

eww dlink, its still a crap brand, has been for a long time. Even their dumb switches can have issues.

 

[CrystalLattice]

The SMB stuff will usually work fine for home or small office: Cisco Small Business, Netgear ProSafe, TP-Link, TrendNet, D-Link, etc. Mikrotik CRS and UBNT EdgeSwitch are also fun to play with, but I wouldn't consider either of them enterprise-ready (...yet).

For value enterprise-class, I'd look at certain upper-end models of Cisco SB and Netgear ProSafe, or most of the lines from HPE, Adtran and/or Allied Telesis.

Note - I know it's overkill for this thread, but you can also land some pretty sweet refurb Cisco Catalyst or Brocade ICX (now Ruckus ICX) off eBay if you pay close enough attention.

Ruckus ICX ICX7150-C12P-2X1G POE+ is more than sufficient. If I find it's overkill for smart home I will post in appropriate place in this forum(if there is Buy/sell equipment), or ebay

 

[sfx2000]

The D-Link 8 port switches are now $19 on sale at Fry's. I drove over and bought another one for my daughter's small business.

Thumbs up on those - they're not fancy, but they work well enough...