I replaced my ancient Dell 3524P corporate POE switch last year with this, listed as a new, open box item on ebay for $243 shipped:
Netgear GS524PP 24-Port 300W Gigabit Ethernet Unmanaged PoE Switch w/ 24 x PoE+
They show up used for even less now and again.
The Dell was bulletproof and stable, but very noisy, used a lot of idle power, and was 100 Mb only. Several of the fans had failed, but my load was small enough (12 cams) that the remaining fans were effective. Some settings were only available through the serial console port, which was a bit of a pain on the rare occasions I needed to dig that deep.
A while back I updated my Ubiquiti wifi setup with new devices, and decided to replace the switch to get full bandwidth to one of the Ubiquiti devices. After poking around for a while, I settled on this Netgear, which is unmanaged and was a good price. I never used any of the power user network functions on the Dell, so this simplified things even more. It's been working great so far, with no problems.
Downsides of an unmanaged switch:
Upsides:
Not for everyone, for sure, but it fits my needs nicely. I'm a PC guy but not a network nerd, so the plug and play saved a ton of time.
Netgear GS524PP 24-Port 300W Gigabit Ethernet Unmanaged PoE Switch w/ 24 x PoE+
They show up used for even less now and again.
The Dell was bulletproof and stable, but very noisy, used a lot of idle power, and was 100 Mb only. Several of the fans had failed, but my load was small enough (12 cams) that the remaining fans were effective. Some settings were only available through the serial console port, which was a bit of a pain on the rare occasions I needed to dig that deep.
A while back I updated my Ubiquiti wifi setup with new devices, and decided to replace the switch to get full bandwidth to one of the Ubiquiti devices. After poking around for a while, I settled on this Netgear, which is unmanaged and was a good price. I never used any of the power user network functions on the Dell, so this simplified things even more. It's been working great so far, with no problems.
Downsides of an unmanaged switch:
- Limited troubleshooting capability (no port mirroring)
- No virtual LANs
- No individual port settings
- No remote POE cycling or configuration changes
- None of the other advanced switch capabilities (QOS, security settings, etc)
Upsides:
- Plug and play
- No configuration or IP setting issues
Not for everyone, for sure, but it fits my needs nicely. I'm a PC guy but not a network nerd, so the plug and play saved a ton of time.
