Customer Reviews

Cisco SD2008 8-port 10/100/1000 Gigabit Switch

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

Signifiant changes have occurred over the life of this switch. Version 1 had an internal fan and was quite noisy, albeit cool running. Version 2 & 2.1 eliminated the fan. However capacitor C251, sitting next to an internal heatsink is prone to failure after 6 - 8 months, resulting in dropped packets and link connections. Version 3.0 has solved this problem with a complete re-layout of the printed circuit board (PCB), with a redesign of the power/voltage regulation. The new version, still fanless, runs MUCH cooler than version 2.1.

 

Bought this switch and received the 2.1 version which is black. It is fanless or at least if it does have fans I don't hear them. Tested it and performance is good getting almost 1Gbit under all conditions (hard disks and other hardware being the limiting factor). Also tested it with jumbo frames and worked OK. Overall good buy, great speed with jumbo frame support at a nice price.

Edit: After almost a year, now the swith will no longer negotiate gigabit and only works OK at 100Mbit. This seems to be a widespread problem with version 2.1. And Linksys seems to be slow replacing or repairing these units under their lifetime warranty. Would suggest getting another switch.

I have bought both the old version of the Linksys SD2008 about 2 years ago when first released and everyone is right - Loud, and unacceptable when sitting on a desk next to you. I am lucky that I built a server and placed it and all networking items in basement so it did not bother me. I did hear it when I went into basement thought. The fan started really getting loud about 3 months ago and it just died in the past week but switch is still going strong. I wanted to see it the Version 2.1 was any better than the 1.0 that I currently have. I have not switched over yet because I am waiting for other new parts but I did plug in new switch and well what do you know. TADA. No fan sounds. I dont think the newer version even have a fan in it. Its slightly better looking than original because front bezel is black instead of grey. I like that fact that the plugs are in the back compared to Netgears switches which plug into the front(which can make an unsightly mess with a lot of plugs) I have used Linksys products for many years now. With Cisco, they seem to get better every year. Give the newer 2.1 switch a try. You won't be dissappointed.

An 8-port Gigabit switch for only $82?!? I thought this was definitely worth a test drive. There is no fan inside this unit, so the reviewers that complained about fan noise must be talking about a different model (the label on the bottom of my unit says "SD2008 Version 2.1"). The Gb ports appear to run at a full speed. The 100/1000 auto speed sensing worked fine except in one situation (see below); I couldn't test at 10Mb because I don't have any 10Mb devices anymore. It's a small package with mounting holes on the back. I mounted mine on the wall near where all my cat 5 cables terminate. All in all I found this switch trivial to deploy and a great performer.

The only problem I encountered was with some older building wiring that only uses 2 pairs. That's good for running 10/100Mb, but 1Gb requires 4 pairs. I could connect a 100Mb device to the SD2008 just fine using 2 pairs, but when I tried to connect a gigabit laptop the link never activated. At least with some other switches in this situation, the laptop interface drops down to 100Mb and all is fine. I don't know the details of the IEEE auto speed negotiation specification well enough to know what's suppose to happen in this case, and so I don't know if this is really a problem I can blame on the SD2008. In my particular situation I just switched to a wireless link that's available and bypassed the problem altogether. Of course I could also have upgraded the wiring to 4 pairs as the standard calls for, but it was a long wiring run and the wireless link was already available.

(Original Review): Geez, the unbelievable fan noise! It really is, as another reviewer put it, as loud as a 10-year-old PC. I'd actually put it as loud as a 20-year-old PC!

(Two Weeks Later): Interestingly, the noise has subsided dramatically after several weeks of ownship. It's completely unobjectionable now. I don't know if the fan bearings have worn away some rough spots, or what, but it's quiet, and still very cool, temperature-wise.

(About 10 Months Later): It died, mysteriously, after about six months. I replaced it with the Linksys SD2005 (five ports), which is way quieter, even compared to the post-two-weeks-quieter noise of this one, and which has been working great. [Still working great as of 2008]

I bought one of these for home use to replace my old 10baseT hub. I plugged in the Linksys switch and, my god is it loud. It has two internal fans in its tiny case, spinning at high RPMs. It's as loud as a server or a ten year old PC.

Despite its tiny size, this box is not suitable for home or any other quiet environment. A machine room, sure, on a desk or in your music studio? Absolutely not.

I'm sending mine back and getting a fanless Netgear switch instead.

--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu

 

This thing worked great out of the box. Bottom says v2.1
There was no noise, heard no fan like others discussed.

Today I noticed that all the computers hooked to it had dropped to 100 Mbps. I did a bunch of solo debugging, then got Linksys on the horn. They determined the same as me, it is in its death throws at 1 month. 10/100 works but for some reason the gigabit quit working. So now it is as worthless to me as the other collection of 10/100 switches that I parked in the attic.

Oh, and now I'm having trouble finding my receipt in my pile of techie receipts so looks like I wasted $80 on a 10/100 to replace my 10/100 so that my video studio computers could communicate quicker with each other and the video storage NAS'.

Bah!

I ran a series of benchmark tests comparing this switch to three others.
-Compared to a four year old Netgear 10/100 switch, the Linksys was able to transfer data about 8 times faster.
-Compared to a Cisco 10/100 eight port microswitch, the Linksys gigabit switch was a little more than 5 times faster. That is quite impressive performance considering it is an $85 gigabit switch compared to the $375 Cisco 100 megabit switch.
-Compared to a Cisco 24 port gigabit switch, it performed at about half the speed. While that is not terribly impressive, it's not bad considering the $1,000+ price difference.

However, what really makes this switch nearly worthless to most people is the fan. I built a high-end custom PC recently with five case fan, one CPU fan, and one VGA fan, and the switch generated more noise! This was absolutely, positively inexcusable. The noise became so distracting that I decided it wasn't worth keeping anymore, so I tried an experiment. One well-placed "whack" with a rubber hammer later, the fan stopped spinning and the blissful silence that we've all come to expect from small 8-port switches finally arrived. It has been like that for three days now, and the switch is still working. We'll see how long it holds up.

In short, however, if this switch is going to be in your basement or closet, it's a great deal. If it will be anywhere near you, purchase something else unless you like fan noise.

I bought a couple of these SD2008s after building a Gig storage server in the basement and moving to Gig xPCs on the desktop, all was working well with excellent throughput and a nice quiet desktop. Then data transfer started to slow down. By a process of elimination, I worked out the switch was dropping packets all over the place. I replaced the "faulty" switch with another SD2008. 2 months later, my network performance has fallen through the floor again, it didn't take long to work out that I'm losing about 80% of my packets between the router and the PC. I won't be buying another SD2008.

I received the latest v3 revision of the Linksys SD2008 8-port Gigabit switch, it has no fan, therefore no fan noise, it's dead quiet. Other than the lights, you'd never know the thing was even powered on. I don't believe it's fair to rate a product based on fan noise anyway, but wanted to clarify that Linksys has removed the fan in the latest version of these switches. I also own the Linksys SR2016 16-port Gigabit switch, it does have a fan and does make some noise, but like the SD2008, it's a GREAT switch; it functions exactly as it should, and is a rock solid switch.

The SD2008 switch itself is incredibly small (about the size of a Nintendo DS) and has a metal chassis, so it's rugged and has a great overall appearance. You could easily fit this little bugger inside a desk drawer or a small shelf, it has a small footprint, which is a bonus considering this switch does have eight 10/100/1000 ports. I get near full 1 Gbps speeds over the SD2008 and have absolutely nothing negative to say about it. It's reliable, inexpensive, well-built, and rock solid. This one gets 5 stars.