These previously popular switches are on sale again at a lower price. 27% off the 5 port and 26% off the 8 port. The LS1005 is also on sale for $11, 31% off but isn't as popular as the black ones. The LS1008 is $15.50.
CamelCamelCamel.
Cooling is not important for these, they barely even get warm. Metal is just prettier if that matters.
Why does it matter if the components are the same or if they are different? They all run pretty cool as there is almost no processing going on inside a dumb L2 switch.
Thermals do not present a bottleneck on a dumb switch, like it does on a GPU or a CPU (which require active cooling).
What does present a limit is the backplane, but every cheapo switch that I've ever seen with the specs shown has at least a 3.8Gbps backplane, and there is no way any home user is going to sustainably max that.
You don't have the slightest clue what you're talking about, and it shows. I'd suggest next time you chose silence as the best answer instead of trying to look clever, because it'll save you some embarrassment.
@rumblytangara: you talked so much but you don't think of reliabilty/durability? you don't think of the heat from surrounding device in a closed cabinet? save your time if you going to say that it rarely happens, it went bad just get a new one, cheap and easy blah blah, that only prove you don't have field experience. lmao I don't have slightest clue, I am looking for a cheap switch for two jobs just like above, and don't need to replace it in 1-2 years like before.
@leetec: What's your router encased in then, genius? Is there some sort of unknown epidemic of devices with plastic enclosures dying in a year? If you want to push the better thermal conductivity nonsense of a metal enclosure on a 3 watt device, then high levels of heat from surrounding devices in a closed cabinet would be worse for a device with a metal enclosure - you know heat transfer works both ways right? 😂
lmao I don't have slightest clue
At least you're honest it.
@leetec: You're a real prize, aren't you?
I've been working around machine rooms (some not air conditioned!) and datacentres for decades, and have a fair bit more experience with switch reliability than you do with the wifi in your mom's basement, barely able to string coherent sentences together :D
lmao I don't have slightest clue
I think that we can all agree on this.
that only prove you don't have field experience
Something tells me the only fields you have experience come complete with cows.
Cheap, low-port density unmanaged switches are total commodity items. They're about as differentiated as milk from the supermarket, and they are for the most part all incredibly reliable.
I've been using a 8 port tp-link GB switch for about 5 yrs straight (not even a day of wonkiness). Just works, if and when it does give up the ghost will just get another.
Important to note that the 5 port LS1005 for $11 and 8 port LS1008 for $15.50 linked in the description are FastEthernet switches (100Mbps) not GigEthernet (1000Mbps)
yes very important distinction there.
Will it make a real world difference?? 4k movies are about 400mb/s for playback?
Large filesize file transfers to an SSD destination will max out a 100Mbps connection.
Other than that use case, the average user won't notice anything.
100Mbps is only 12.5 MB/s. You don't even need a SSD to max it out.
Looking on my network the majority of devices are 100Mbit and my internet is less than. 100Mbit. I do large file transfers between PC just about never.
Looking on my network the majority of devices are 100Mbit and my internet is less than
How old are they ? I had GBE devices even in 2000s :O btw, I have used 10Mbit Ethernet as well, I think I had couple of RTL8029 cards lol.
TBH, better to get network infrastructure supporting at lease GBE these days, still anything above that is not that cheap.
Thats surprising, majority of my devices are all gigabit. Usually only old cheap streaming boxes or foxtel boxes would be 100Mbit.
@lonewolf: That's what I thought as well for a while but the wired connection on even 2023 TVs is 100 Mbit. The wireless can actually be faster.
Other devices that are just now starting to use 1 GBit: Network printers. Even 3 yr old ones and lower end models still stick to 100 Mbit.
That said except for the TVs, Media streaming boxes and Gaming consoles 100 Mbit is usually fine. There are some advantages that are overlooked with wired connections:
1. Much lower latency (delay) when doing actions on a wired network (think gaming consoles)
2. Little or no interference from radio waves (even unshielded wire handles radio wave interference better than Wifi (which is a type of radio wave))
3. Harder to hack the network (although the endpoint devices can still be hacked
4. Having fixed wired devices that don't move and using wifi for devices that move means your wifi capacity is used better. Fewer devices on Wifi (waiting their turn) to send and receive data.
Just spend the extra $5, it's 10 times faster. And sure, it may not make a difference accessing the internet if you're under 100mbps, but if you eventually realise you want to do communication between devices, it makes a world of difference.
Some of the examples of how I use my gigabit network:
* file transfers between computers using sftp, I occasionally move 50+ gigabytes at a time, and I'm pretty sure it takes under 10 minutes, it's fast enough that I don't even think about it. It's a lot less painful than having to physically go between computers with a USB drive.
* remotely accessing the computers in my home using Moonlight, I stream the output at 4K with high bitrates. Can even game on my machines remotely (since I prefer using the Mac, it's really useful for streaming games from my two PCs to the Mac).
* I use my PS5 over remote play in bed, with gigabit ethernet remote play is amazing, latency wise it's fairly close to playing on a TV, though it is limited to 1080p.
* I use VLC media player on my Apple TV to stream anime and movies to my TV from my Mac, what's cool is that the transfer is super fast and you can copy a whole bunch of episodes to the device in one go using the VLC web interface.
* I use Moonlight on the same Apple TV to stream my PC games to my television at 4K, giving me a low-latency console-like experience on the TV without having to move my PC around the house.
* I use rsync to synchronise my music collection across my two Macs.
Once you discover how useful a fast wired network is, there's so much stuff you can do with it, but you're not going to get very far with 100mbps hardware, it's just too slow to be useful for most of the stuff I mentioned above. At this point I'd just suggest spending the few extra dollars and getting a gigabit network, also remember to get cat6 cables to go with the better switch.
It's also worth noting that even if your current devices are 100mbps, two devices connected to a gigabit switch (or series of gigabit switches) will still transfer at gigabit speeds because the data doesn't have to go all the way through your router or whatever is 100mbps, the only time your traffic will slow to 100mbps is if it hits the 100mbps device along the way to its destination.
Nice write up thanks
This is all contingent on the gigabit switch being physically next to router and all the relevant devices like Ps5 etc?
@G Wok: Distance isn't a big factor, wired networks are fast, if you think about a setup like one you might find in a university, they have kilometres worth of network cabling going all over the place and it's still fast. They do of course need to think about how to optimise a network that large, but in a home networking situation, you can pretty much run cables and have switches where you need them without having to worry about the speed of the network. Just make sure you stick to gigabit switches, routers and cables.
Traffic within your network should always take the shortest route, so if you have a room with a switch in it and there are 3 computers connected to that switch, those 3 computers can all communicate directly with each other without network traffic needing to leave that switch, so traffic doesn't go back to the router if it doesn't need to. If on the other hand it needs to communicate with a device at the other end of your house and it needs to jump from one switch to your router and then to another switch, it'll do that, but it should still be fast as long as all your network devices and cabling along the way are gigabit as well.
In my particular setup, to remote play my PC on my TV, network traffic has to go through 3 switches, and off the top of my head it only has around a 1.7 ms ping.
@raziel2001au: Wow that's amazing.
So you run Ethernet cables around the house like electrical ports? Did you get an electrician to do that?
@G Wok: I just did it myself, but you probably could get an electrician to do it, but it's not really electrical cables, so just check with them first, but there isn't much to it. At its simplest, you just need one CAT6 network cable going from each room back to where your router is and then plug all of those cables into the router (you can add a switch if your router doesn't have enough ethernet plugs).
If you need to connect multiple devices in a room, you just need a single network socket in the room, as again you can just add a switch if you need to connect multiple devices in the room. In other words, you don't need one network cable back to the router per device, just run one cable for each area and use a switch to connect multiple devices in that area.
Thanks
I see this a lot. What's the purpose of it, and will it dramatically change my tech/internet/networking experience?
It's to connect devices using ethernet cable. If you are using wifi happily, you will probably not notice much.
Ethernet is more reliable (practically zero dropouts), faster (you will only notice this under a narrow range of use cases). Slightly better for gaming latency if you have a flakey wifi network.
But… you need cabling, and most people don't have it and are not prepared to run cabling between their rooms.
Isn't there one (or something similar) in the modem/router already? I connect my switch (dock), TV and PC all via ethernet to it already.
How would this assist then?
Most home routers also incorporate a 4-5 port switch. If everything is connected to that via ethernet, an extra switch is of no use.
It can also be useful when have a bunch of devices far from the modem/router so you run just one cable from the router to the switch and connect all the devices to it.
Its like a powerboard, but for ethernet connections.
I only just learnt about this a few weeks ago, I never had the use for one until I moved into a house with ethernet ports! It's so good, I had so many issues with my nest wifi network dropping out, lag/stutter on casting my desktop. Now that all my routers are connected via LAN, it's blazing, amazing and zero stutter/lag/down time.
Plus remember that there are cheap tools that criminals can use to cripple your wifi network. With this product, you can LAN everything up so you are immune to that attack.
I have ethernet ports in most of my rooms though. I had that specifically requested to be installed recently when the sparky came around.
And as mentioned earlier, I have a modem/route that has additional ports. So my PC uses Ethernet, although laptops and iPads are on wifi but that because they're portable.
Doesn't that defeat the purpose?
Ah well, at least I now know what they're for haha 😆
Switches are more versatile than routers, but as with every network you need to set protocols in place. Every connection established needs proper security set up or else your whole access point is vulnerable to hackers, loggers and keyloggers. Always update and upgrade your security revisions when possible and never manipulate the system to think it’s fully protected.
Wow, these are really good prices for the switches mentioned above. I can attest to the good durability and reliability of the product use.
thanks OP, bought
Sorry I’m blind to technology. Can I use this to have both wired internet and Wi-Fi too?
nope, this only for wired connection, wifi will need router/mesh. But router will comes with 3-4 ports for wired connection, and mesh like TPlink will comes with 1-2 ports.
Yea that’s what I mean. I want to take 1 port for my ps5 and 1 for my router. But as you just said, I can do wired straight from the router’s ports right?
Correct
any good deal on poe switches?
I had a quick look ad it's as t least around 50 bucks, I also would like to know as I plan to use it for security cameras and often these support PoE
Heads up if you find anything!
Please.
Need a GB POE switch ASAP
If you are using this for IP cameras, a 100Mbps PoE switch will be fine as cameras don't pump out that much data, and cheaper than gig.
I've seen them on Ali/Taobao, and would be perfectly happy with some random Chinese brand. Layer 2 switches have practically no intelligence built into them.
Gigabit
4/5 = $69 - https://www.amazon.com.au/TP-Link-Gigabit-Recovery-Operation…
8/10 = $89 - https://www.amazon.com.au/TP-Link-10-Port-Recovery-Operation…
100Mbps
8/9 = $65 - https://www.amazon.com.au/TP-Link-100Mbps-Recovery-Operation…
Bought one thanks op. Now need to think about where to use it.
Can this power wireless AP points? Like Unifi AP's?
Or do I need something that has PoE.
Can this power wireless AP points? Like Unifi AP's?
No.
Or do I need something that has PoE.
Yes.
Do these need a power supply??
They come with 5 or 12V DC wall warts, like practically all home networking kit.
These are cheap and do the job. Apparently the metal ones are better for cooling, but I'm happy with my cheapskate buy.