Managing the Unmanaged Switch
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I have confirmed this with my own version 1 SG108E (which additionally can't actually be managed without an ancient version of java and iptables /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward forwarding tricks. https://shred.zone/en/dev/setting-up-tp-link-tl-sg108e-with-...)
I'd say stay far away from this hardware line unless you actually do just want a dumb switch. If you do buy make sure you know exactly what hardware revision you're getting. I've heard the version 5 fixes it.
At least for the version I had. I replaced it with some used smb stuff with a few 10g ports, cause unnecessary 10g is more fun.
This bit me as well, FYI Zyxel switches seem to be among the few that do this properly, even on cheapest models. On the other hand their web interface cannot be used over SSH or other tunnels... The software side of network equipment is in a sad state, no wonder the hyperscalers moved to whitebox switches
I've got the SG108, since so many years I forgot how many... It's a little workhorse. I'm pretty sure it's totally unmanaged. I've got both a 192.x.x.x and a 10.x.x.x LAN, on two different switches (one being the SG108) and I've got an actual bridge (and firewall) between the two. It's not a managed switch but a NUC doing the bridging between 192. and 10. I also have got a 3rd switch near the fiber termination (apartment is wired with ethernet in the walls).
I did that years ago: even though I've got a "guests" network, I still wanted my own machines to be on a totally separate LAN.
> I'd say stay far away from this hardware line unless you actually do just want a dumb switch.
Yeah exactly. I've got the SG108, because it's dumb. It's really fine. It never ever fails.
I'm using unmanaged switches at home because it's one less thing to configure/manage.
Now I only have about four desktop PCs (two being workstations used as headless servers), 4 NUCs, 3 laptops, and six Raspberry Pi. It's not a big network by any means.
A buddy of mine has got a 42U rack at home full of servers (and Mikrotik switches) and, well, that's another can of worms.
Power, power, power .... one of these older gigabit switches is going to use 10x power at idle, compared with one of the crappy and cheapest realtek-based "unmanaged" switches. Which is kinda important for something that is going to be 24h on. And of course since no one reviews these things, you'll only know once you have spend the money.
So if you really can get away with a crappy web interface onto the crappy low-power realtek chip, you may get the best of both worlds.
I've been using this equipment in my home LAN for a mix of 10Gb fiber, 2.5Gb ethernet, and a small number of devices that came with 10Gb ethernet ports (Tyan motherboards) get SFP ethernet adapters.
Unmanaged 4x2.5Gb ethernet 2x10Gb fiber - https://a.co/d/08J99UjH - I daisy chain these with fiber connections to have a kind of 10Gb backbone that terminates at my main PC with the fiber NIC.
Managed 10x fiber - https://a.co/d/06927QeJ - This is the most economical 10Gb fiber switch I could find at the time and it's had no problems for the low price. Has a serial management interface in addition to web. Extensive management capabilities. I've used its link aggregation successfully.
Managed 4x2.5Gb ethernet 2x10Gb fiber - https://a.co/d/0fud7jzF - First hope off my modem before the fiber switch, good management capabilities.
It's kind of funny, my LAN is all random Amazon brands people would warm against relying on, but I picked out ones that have been solid and reliable for years of use. No need to break the bank if you find the right stuff.
The problem with Fiber for now will remain that so few consumer devices can actually connect to it without first converting to RJ45. You are p much limited to some enthusiast networking gear and server gear and everything else needs you to convert.
I recently had my families home ethernet situation upgraded and we went with Cat8 for now (it wasn't meaningfully more expensive to doing any other Cat cable all things considered). It is compatibile with networking stuff that is commonly available today and hopefully in the future some switch will appear to make full use of it (I am slightly sceptical, but I assume 10G will at least still be seen over Cat for consumers).
Base level Mac studio is already 10G as standard and it's only $100 extra on a mac mini.
Long time until 10G per device isn't enough at home.
You don't need Cat6 for 2.5G. Regular Cat5e that has been installed everywhere for years is fine for 2.5G.
Cat6 is enough for 10G ethernet within the lengths you find in a typical residential house. You don't need fiber.
For short runs even 10G works on quality Cat5e.
I think some home lab fans overestimate network cabling requirements. With Cat6 I could string a cable from one end of my house and back and not even be close to breaking the spec for 10G. For 2.5G ethernet cheap Cat5e will get you anywhere you need to reach in a residential home.
- Fiber's somewhat easier to run since it's lighter; it's easier to break but the bend radius is much more forgiving than you might assume. I have yet to damage a fiber cable myself.
- More electronic isolation between equipment is always a benefit, which fiber naturally gives
The tradeoffs lead me to prefer running fiber for 10G which then branches out to 2.5G ethernet for most equipment in the house, but if I didn't have these Tyan boards prompting me to try out 10G equipment then I would probably stick to 2.5G ethernet for everything for simplicity. If you're aiming for 10G then I don't think ethernet would make sense in most situations for both upfront cost and heat generation/power usage.
But it is true that, otherwise, and in a surprising turn of events, fiber is cheaper to run than 10GBASE-T.
1) Most likely we make self retracting reels, or just very easy cable/slack management and sell fixed length cables with a hard connector one end and a snap on connector the other end (https://youtu.be/6dop-9_0_g8?t=43&si=DdAXLMU_A7wTuCTn). That solves the problem of accounting for the plug in drilling holes. We could easily do this tomorrow on 2mm white 1f or 3mm 2f cable. This size is important as it is about the maximum you can just use adhesive to stick to the top of skirting.
2) we use plastic optical fibre and build a whole bunch of infrastructure around that. That is much easier to terminate, cut and safer to use but a load of work will be required.
runs openwrt
My core network is Mikrotik gear with 10Gb uplinks, but it would be nice to use my old unmanaged gbit switches (Netgear GS108 mainly) with vlans rather than going nuts with more Mikrotik or having lots of homeruns.
[0] high-end ones too, for that matter
[1] the alternative I thought of first was setting up an Arduino as an I2C slave. But then you'd also want to switch the switch's power supply, and need an ethernet port on the Arduino just to connect to the switch itself.
For example some of the cheaper unmanaged 8-port 802.3af/at switches with enough power budget for 7 cameras. Average traffic from a single camera isn't a lot, easily fitting in a single 1000BaseT link to the managed switch. Put the whole dumb switch in the camera vlan.
Often it’s way cheaper to have one hardware version and control features in firmware, and that principle is even more true for silicon (same die but fuses that are blown to disable parts of it, or the chip clocked down because it might not perform properly at the speed of the more expensive SKU), so not surprising it’s this way!
The https://github.com/logicog/RTLPlayground alternative firmware for RTL8372/RTL8373 based 2.5GBit Switches does fit into 512KiB, including web management interface.
If you’re willing to go the no name brand route
In case you were also inexplicably blocked by Cloudflare.
But at the same time, we have to stop pretending that 1Gbit Ethernet isn't utterly obsolete in the same way that RS-232 is. Useful maybe for low power, longish reach, but its slower than a good number of internet connections now, and the wifi on the other end too.
Ex: My house, turns out the 1Gbit uplink from the ISP provided hardware to my firewall was causing me to lose 300MB because it was actually provisioned at 1.3Gbit, and when I switched it to 5Gbit, my Wifi got faster.. Ex, I can get in excess of 1Gbit in about 2/3rds of my house now to sites on the internet.
1GbaseT is 27 year old technology this year, 10GbaseT is 20 this year, and by any other computing metric should be obsolete too since there has been a 25GbaseT spec for 10 years that no one has bothered to manufacture. And here in 2026, double or more should be easy with modern phy technology, and with proper line quality could easily be all of dynamic power, dynamic length and dynamic speeds over a range of cable types and length, both running at lower power and higher performance.
because dealing with fiber is easier than cat8 copper. unless you want poe there is very little reason to use base-t.
Then the argument about "but we have to pull more cable to guarantee those speeds" or "It consumes to much power" all go away, and instead the analog side gets a bit more complex, but given the $100+ phy's in 10GbaseT the argument that it drives cost is bogus when triband Wifi7 USB nic's are $30.
Maybe its different outside of America but most people in America have less than 1gbps internet connections, and have little need to transfer data in-house from one location to another that the time saved by having a 5, 10, or 25gbps connection would benefit them in any measurable way.
Even for those people who run NAS systems for extra storage will only saturate gigabit connections occasionally, and being able to save a few hours a year waiting for transfers to complete is likely not worth the initial setup effort and costs for them.
I'm a bit of a techie, and my house is wired for 10gbps internally, but no isp in my area offers more than 1gbps, and I live in a well-to-do and densely populated area near to many tech companies.
So, in short, 1gbps is not obsolete. It probably should be, but it still meets the needs of the great majority of people that use it.
Most providers are topping out at 2.5Gbps and big part of that is that you can't actually use even that much over Wi-Fi and anything >2.5Gbe consumer side is comparatively expensive/rare and no hard wired cabling in most houses anyway. So as such most ISP routers are 2.5Gbe LAN with only a few exceptions (https://www.choose.co.uk/broadband/sky/reviews/sky-gigafast-...).