Linksys LGS108P 8-Port Gigabit PoE+ Desktop Switch Review

Introduction Small and medium office setups can benefit greatly from Power over Ethernet (PoE) enabled devices and when used clever, it's also something that can reduce the cable clutter and improve the setup a lot. An easy way to control this is with a PoE enabled switch and today I'm taking a look at just that. Linksys' LGS108P is an 8-port desktop switch with four PoE capable ports and double the switching capability. Linksys unmanaged PoE+ switches come in three sizes. The 8 port desktop model that I'm looking at today, a bigger 16-port desktop model, and a 24-port rack model. They all have similar specifications, just scaled according to the number of ports. The LGS108P has a switching bandwidth of 16 Gbps and it can handle up to 8000 entries in the MAC address table. All eight ports are autosensing Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports and the four PoE+ ports have a total power budget of 50W. Being an unmanaged switch has advantages and disadvantages alike, so it really depends on your usage whether you want one thing or another. One of the advantages is the full plug and play setup where there is no need for any configuration changes or settings to be made. Plug it in, turn it on, and you're good to go. This saves time and effort. It still features a Quality of Service (QoS) function which prioritizes traffic to particular devices or activities and helps maintain mission-critical data throughput regardless of network congestion. While the LGS108P is a PoE+ (802.3at) switch, it's fully compatible with default PoE as well as other common IEEE standards such as 802.3 , 802.3u, 802.3x, 802.3ab, 802.3az, and 802.3af. Overall, a simple and compact PoE+ switch that fits on your desktop and doesn't make any noise. Feature Highlights Wired connection speeds up to 1,000 Mbps 8 Gigabit Ethernet autosensing ports Power over Ethernet (PoE) support Easy plug & play connection QoS Meets EEE (Energy Efficient Ethernet) 802.3az standard Specifications Packaging and Accessories As a business product, the LGS108P comes in a simple box with a label that tells us what's inside. The label itself shows a picture of the included device as well as a section that explains what it is. Inside is the switch itself, but also a documentation disk and a quick install guide. They're great to have, but they probably won't be used by many. The included power supply brick uses a default PC power cable and supports 110 to 240V input and is as such easily usable all around the world. Linksys also included two screws for wall mounting the switch. A Closer Look Moving in a little closer to the LGS108P and we first notice the general LEDs for PoE Max and the system itself. Next are the four PoE+ powered Gigabit Ethernet ports, each with their own link and mode LEDs. Following the PoE+ ports are the last four and normal Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports. Both sides feature air vents and one of them also has a Kensington Security slot. The only feature on the rear of the switch is a plug for the power supply. On the bottom are four relative big rubber feet that make sure your switch stays where you placed it and we also see the two holes used when wall mounting the DGS-108P. It can be mounted in all four directions, allowing you to place it just the way it suits your setup the best. Test Systems, Software, & Methodology Testing the performance of a switch is a relatively easy task with our network benchmark apps. Connect two systems to the switch and send data from one system to another and measure the performance. By adding 10GbE network cards to each of the systems, I also make sure that my network controllers won't bottleneck the tests. I will be using PassMark's PerformanceTest 8.0 and its built-in network test. With this, I can easily specify the transfer protocol, packet sizes, and duration of the test and I get a minimum, an average, and a maximum speed in return. I will run tests with both TCP and UDP and I will run tests with fixed and variable packet sizes and with that, we get a broad view on the switch's performance. I've also added LAN Speed Test here as it gives a straightforward test with customization ability on a network drive. I'll set the app to packet sizes of 1GB and send 10 packets to gain the minimum, average, and maximum performance. Client-side Hardware Supermicro C7Z97-OCE Intel Xeon E3-1230Lv3 Corsair Vengeance 16GB 1866MHz DDR3 Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD Sapphire R7 240 2GB be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 850W Thermaltake Water 3.0 Performer Lian Li PC-T60 D-Link DXE-820T Dual Port 10Gbase NIC Adapter Server-side Hardware Gigabyte Z79X UD5H-BK Intel Core i7-4790K G.Skill Ares DDR3 1866MHz (2x4GB) OCZ Vertex4 256GB CoolerMaster Silent Pro Hybrid 850W NZXT Kraken X60 Dimastech Easy V3 TN9210: Triple-speed 10GBase-T Network Adapter Card Software Lan Speed Test Passmark PerformanceTest 8: Advanced Network Test Performance: LAN Speed Test LAN Speed Test is a very simple tool for benchmarking network connection. It allows me to specify both the filesize to be sent and what amount of times that I want it to be sent. To get a good view on actual performance, I'll be sending 10 packages with 1GB of size each during each test. Performance: PassMark PerformanceTest Suite With PassMark PerformanceTest I can define the block size and send both fixed and variable sizes over the network connection. I'm using 16384 byte sized blocks for the fixed test and the variable test will run from 32-byte block sizes to 16384. Fixed Block Size To test the maximum throughput speed that a connection can handle, a fixed block size of 16384 Bytes is sent from the client to the server over a period of five minutes. The higher block size will allow the transfer rate to stay as high as possible – in the same way that large files transfer from one drive to another quicker than lots of small files of the same total size. Variable Block Size In a real world situation, the blocks of data that pass through a network adaptor are not of the same size each time, so to give a more realistic impression of how an adaptor performs, the adaptor is once again tested for a period of five minutes. This time however, the block size will vary from 32 Bytes up to 16384 Bytes in increasing steps of 148.7 Bytes each time. Conclusion Pricing At the time of writing, the Linksys LGS108P 8-Port Business Desktop PoE+ Switch will set you back $134.53 in the US and £75.99 in the UK through Amazon. Conclusion The Linksys LGS108P is a basic but solid switch that can help reduce the cable clutter in your office thanks to the PoE+ feature. You can easily power VoIP and video phones, access points, and security cameras without having to connect additional power to the devices. I tried to connect both access points and a security camera to the switch and they worked flawlessly - as expected. The design is fairly simple, but it is a beautiful switch that will look good on your desk or wall. While it is a desktop model, you can also wall mount it in any of the four basic directions and get it out of the way. It is also a silent device as it comes without any fans and is as such suited better for office use than a loud spinning fan switch. The metal enclosure is stable and it has large rubber feet for its size to make sure it stays where you place it. The eight ports all feature auto-sensing and quality of service for prioritized traffic and the ability to maintain mission-critical data throughput regardless of network congestion. Being an unmanaged switch has ups and downs. There are no configs to worry about, but also fewer options. In return, it's fully plug-and-play and you only need to power it up and connect your cables to be up and running. Pros PoE+ (IEEE 802.3af) Plug and Play QoS Meets 802.3az Energy Efficient Ethernet standard Passive cooled and silent Cons Only four of eight ports are PoE+ "Linksys LGS108P is a simple but useful PoE+ switch. It's built well and allows for an easy PoE+ setup in your office." Thank You Linksys for providing us with this review sample