15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Robust Construction but Klutzy to upgrade, April 3 2011
By Marvin Lee Jr. - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Netgear Prosafe 8-Port Gigabit Smart Switch (GS108T-NAS) (Personal Computers)
The Netgear people love to build their switches in tight little, flat metal cases. This one has that same family profile. This model is not a "dumb" style switch. You need to program it. This can be great if you need those features. If not, buy their other model without the programing. The problem you may run into, is that the firmware inside the unit as delivered is several versions out-of-date. The update process is truly a pain in the butt, because the process is not intuitive, and the device does not indicate its status consistently. Once you stumble through this process, the device works great, and may protect your computers from malware and control data flow to different devices and services better than a dumb switch. In function, the GS108T-NAS is fast and effective, and appears to be built robustly. Highly recommended.
23 of 27 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome switch with all the features!, Aug 25 2010
By Fred Westrom "Fred" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Netgear Prosafe 8-Port Gigabit Smart Switch (GS108T-NAS) (Personal Computers)
After having used high end managed switches at the office and low dollar desktop switches at home, I purchased this Netgear GS108T so that I could use its port mirroring feature to make life easier when doing network software development at home, and I am truly impressed with this Netgear GS108T.
If you want advanced managed functionality, you can connect to the web-management page and set up anything from per-port MAC or IP filtering ACLs, rate limiting, and port mirroring, to NTP synchronization, SNMP management, or even link aggregation. The feature-set is way too rich for home needs - but perfect for business - unless you are a geek like me and love to play with cool toys! If you don't known what a managed switch is, you can still plug this thing in and use it just like a dumb desktop switch.
I definitely recommend the Netgear GS108T to anyone who is looking for a solid gigabit switch with advanced features on a smaller budget.
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent fast responding Gig switch for Media center, Feb 5 2011
By B. Hunnel - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Netgear Prosafe 8-Port Gigabit Smart Switch (GS108T-NAS) (Personal Computers)
I spent a lot of time trying to find a Gigabit switch that actually publishes performance benchmarks specifically for a switch that is affordable. I tried connecting a 3D-TV, PS3 and a 3D Blu-ray over a high-end wireless network, but I could not get reliable bandwidth when watching VUDU or Netflix.
With this switch, there is no congestion and it is very fast and reliable (of course it is wired now too). You can use a browser to the switch and see detailed statistics on each port including transmit errors,receive errors, collisions and a lot more. If you use the wrong or a bad Ethernet cable, you can easily troubleshoot the problem to the exact cable and port. It supports Jumbo frames, port mirroring, QoS, VLAN and more.
If you are looking for a very-fast low cost switch for home or office that has management capabilities, then take a look at this switch.
Performance Specifications
* Forwarding modes: Store-and-forward
* Bandwidth: 16 Gbps full duplex
* Network latency: Less than 15us for 64-byte frames in store-and-forward mode for 1000 Mbps to 1000 Mbps transmission
* Buffer memory: 128 KB embedded memory per unit
* Address database size: 4k media access control (MAC) addresses per system
* Mean time between failure (MTBF): 278,553 hours (~32 years)
* Acoustic noise: 0 dB