112 of 116 people found the following review helpful:
Great for its intended use
This is an unmanaged switch, which means that you can not configure Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANS) or Quality of Service (QoS) - though QoS is supported through the implementation of 802.1p, but all the attached devices must support 802.1p in order to use it. Since there is no configuration, all you have to do is plug it into power and plug your devices into it. It...
46 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
To help clear things up...
Hi guys/girls,
I noticed that the first review for this item quoted what I had written in a review on Newegg so I thought I'd clear up some discrepancies between what users have been writing in recent reviews compared to earlier ones.
From what I understand of this product, hardware version 2 has no problems in a mixed network. However, from my...
This is an unmanaged switch, which means that you can not configure Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANS) or Quality of Service (QoS) - though QoS is supported through the implementation of 802.1p, but all the attached devices must support 802.1p in order to use it. Since there is no configuration, all you have to do is plug it into power and plug your devices into it. It really is that simple for any unmanaged switch. It will automatically allow all your devices to talk to each other at the physical layer. Of course, your applications must be configured right to talk to each other, but these unmanaged devices make building the infrastructure a snap.
In answer to a previously posted review, I tested this device in the following way:
-Port 1 connected to my desktop computer with a Gigabit network interface card (NIC)
-Port 2 connected to a 10/100 switch which was connected to a gigabit ethernet storage device
-Port 3 connected to a second DGS-2208 switch which was connectedto the exact same model gigabit ethernet storage device
-Port 4 connected to a laptop with a 10/100 NIC
The point of this setup was to use the identical computer communicating with identical devices through a 10/100 connection and through a gigabit (1000) connection. I transferred a 10 GB file to the ethernet storage device through the gigabit connection first and then I transferred the exact same file through the 10/100 connection. The GB connection was about five times faster.
Now, this proves that the switch does not automatically throttle back to the slowest "connected" device. However, it does not indicate whether the gigabit connections will slow to the speed of 10/100 connections if those slower connections are actually active.
To test this, I transferred the same file from the laptop to the slower connected ethernet storage device while also transferring the file from the desktop to the faster connected ethernet stoarage device. The results? The gigabit connected devices still transferred the data at rates faster than possible on a 10/100 connection. This proves that the gigabit speeds are still achieved even when a 10/100 connection is active.
In the end, due to memory and processor limitations, this device cannot even compare to enterprise-class gigabit switches from Cisco and other providers; however, it is the best performing gigabit switch I've ever seen for under $75.
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I noticed that the first review for this item quoted what I had written in a review on Newegg so I thought I'd clear up some discrepancies between what users have been writing in recent reviews compared to earlier ones.
From what I understand of this product, hardware version 2 has no problems in a mixed network. However, from my testing when I bought the DGS-2208 and from D-Link's E-mail support, hardware version 1 shunts all ports to the lowest active connection.
My initial testing had been done between two computers, one with a raid0 array on a gaming machine and the other a file server with raid1. Both machines had their software firewalls removed and the connections between the two computers and the DGS-2208 used Category 6 cables. Both machines have EXPI9300PT Intel Nics. Transfer speeds were between 600Mbit/s - 700Mbit/s, per iperf.
Adding a connection to a dns caching machine that had a rl8139 chipset nic or to a motorola router, (both 100Mbit connections) the same test before mentioned was ran again , except that the speeds never went above 100Mbit/s. This was not between the gigabit connections and the 100Mbit connections, it was still between the two computers with Intel Gbit nics. After additional tests were ran with the same results I contacted D-Link's E-mail support.
At the time, there was not a listing on D-Link's website for this product and it did not have the product manual available like they do now. I emailed D-Link with my iperf results and observations, asking this question:
"My question is, Is this switch able to operate at 100mbit and 1000mbit at the same time, or is it limited to the slowest connection present?"
A representative responded with:
Your Case ID is DLK397875395.
Date of Reply: 8/24/2006
Products: DGS-2208
It is limited to the slowest connection.
Sincerely,
Jerry Hernandez
D-Link Technical Support
I ended up replacing all 100Mbit Nics in the remaining computers with rl8169 chipset Nics (Gbit) and replacing the previously used router with one that had a Gbit switch built in (RVS4000). This fixed my issues I was having with the DGS-2208 because there was no longer any connections to it that ran at 100Mbit.
All that being said, if yours works fine in a mixed environment, then I'm happy you didn't have the troubles I did. For the person that condescended the first reviewer stating that he doesnt understand how a switch works, the guy was just trying to inform other users so that they could avoid similar problems.
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This is the best unmanaged switch I've been able to find. Unmanaged means that the unit does not have an ethernet interface that can be used to prioritize traffic flow. Unmanaged switches are by far the most common type, and for most residential applications will do the job for significantly less money.
The switch operates at full speed, and I haven't had any signs of 100 Mbp/s devices causing it to slow down other devices. I checked this, and it operates each device plugged into it at full speed regardless of the speed of the other devices. Some people say it does slow down, so perhaps there are multiple revisions out there. The two that I have were purchased in August 2007 and do not have a problem with this.
The ports are well spaced, and it is easy to plug in and remove cables, even ones with plastic overmolded snagless heads. I've had other switches in the past that had the ports so close together that I started leaving every other port open just to get some space. That is not the case with this one.
I have two of them, with one up in my office and the other in the basement wall-mounted beside the wiring closet. The basement unit is the primary backbone for my home network, so it gets a heavy workout. The ability to wall mount them is a nice option.
One thing about these switches is that the primary processor in the unit does not have a heat sink on it. I opened both of mine and put a heat sink on them that I had lying around. They don't need a big one, as the heat generated isn't extreme, but you can easily add one as a bit of insurance.
I put two of these in full service in my home and have used them continuously now for over a year, and they are still going strong. When I need another one, this is the one I'll get.
Fast, fairly inexpensive, and well made. Recommended.
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I'm a technology junkie, and run networks professionally, so I've had home LANs for years. After several failed desktop gig switches, and reading dozens of user reviews, I picked this model as a combination of reliability and low-price.
* I dropped this into place where I had a 100Mb NETGEAR FS608 8-Port Fast Ethernet Switch. My throughput on a large file copy went from about 5.7MB/s to 22MB/s, using the same computers, cables, and software, almost a 4x speedup. I suspect my test throughput is now limited by other factors rather than the switch.
* The case is a little large, but is wall mountable. My biggest complaint is that it's oriented as a desktop switch (lights on one side, cables on the other), which is awkward when you mount it on the wall (either the lights are hidden or you can't get to the cables easily).
* This is a "green" product. It's max power draw is 6W, vs the 17.5W for a NETGEAR GS108 ProSafe 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Desktop Switch. If both products ran at max power usage all year long, this Dlink would use 52.56KWh a year, and the Netgear GS108 would use 153.3kWh a year. The difference would cost me about $[...] a year at the rate I pay here in Maryland. So the "green" product effectively gives you the equivalent of a rebate, every year!
I realize that the switches wouldn't run full-tilt all-year long, but the idea holds. We're finally starting to realize all the little things we do add up, environmentally and in cost. Buying hardware designed with that idea in mind helps!
* It handles both 100Mb and 1000Mb hosts simultaneously without a problem (contrary to some comments otherwise). Mine is a H/W ver. C1
Other thoughts: In the race to lower prices on consumer-grade gig-e switches, vendors seem to have cut corners. Almost every model of gig switch under $100 is plagued by quality problems and short lifespans (regardless of what the warranty says) according to many reviews.
For example, the NETGEAR GS108 ProSafe 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Desktop Switch is a GREAT design derived from the vendor's commercial lineup. Its case is sturdy heat-conductive metal, and easy to wall-mount. But mine died after 1.5 years of moderate use. I did better than many other folks who say their's only lasted 1 year. Annoying, especially considering its premium pricing.
This DLink SEEMS to be the exception based on reviews: cheaper, good performance, with no user complaints about it dying. So far, so good!
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This is one of the few present-day unmanaged gigE switches which appears to do speed and duplex negotiation properly. It negotiates speed/duplex successfully with the following vendor's PHYs: Broadcom, Intel, Marvell Yukon/Yukon II, and nVidia (nForce 4). Verified using both Windows XP drivers and FreeBSD drivers.
If you don't know what a PHY is, just consider it a NIC, otherwise use Wikipedia to discern the difference.
Pros:
* Significantly faster than Netgear and Hawking Technologies' unmanaged gigE switches
* ARP caching is reliable (no "leftover" MACs; no need to power-cycle switch if changing devices on a specific port)
* Dual-coloured LEDs to depict of speed and network I/O
* No dedicated uplink port; you can use any of the 8 ports for uplink
* Incredibly lightweight
* Wide (physically), allowing for better spacing of RJ45 jacks
* Remains cool (slightly warm near front of unit)
* Very low-power AC adapter
* AC adapter is space-friendly (not a "wall wart")
Cons:
* Network I/O LEDs don't update/flash as often as I'd hoped (other vendor's products do the same thing these days, though)
* Slow initialisation when powered on. Switch appears to go through a sequence of tests, one per port, then resets all ports. Entire boot time is about 6-7 full seconds, which is fairly long for an unmanaged switch.
Would I recommend this product? Definitely -- especially over Netgear unmanaged switches, which suffer from numerous compatibility problems with mixed-vendor PHYs, and also emit quite a bit of heat (especially the small/square blue models).
I'll take an extra moment to point out that the speed gain from this switch is quite significant compared to my (personal favourite) Hawking Technologies switches, and Netgear switches. I'm not sure why this is, but possibly layer 2/ARP routing inside of this switch is done much more efficiently than competitors' products.
I didn't give it five (5) stars because I haven't been able to test it with all vendor PHYs; 3Com, Attansic, Linksys, Netgear, Realtek, and SMC are others which I haven't tested.
If you're wanting something that fits your desk, and you don't need the extra 3 ports, consider getting the 5-port model instead.
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I had to post a review because one of the reviews I read here freaked me out. I found it hard to believe a gigabit switch would fall back to the slowest speed on all ports and wouldn't auto negotiate per port. I bought one anyway to see what happens...
Bottom line: It's a gigabit switch that works as you'd expect. I have several computers with gigabit nics and several non-gigabit devices (router, print server, older computer) all connected at the same time.
The gigabit enabled computers connect and transfer at gigabit speed. The 10/100 devices connect and transfer at 100 Mbps. No problems at all.
I believe the reviewers who had problems didn't have their gigabit nics set to 1000 or don't own gigabit nics or have wiring problems (gigabit uses all 4 pairs and 10/100 uses only 2 of the 4 pairs on a cable). I even tried to create a problem by setting my gigabit nics to AUTO and they still negotiated 1000 Mbps. The only way I can ding this switch is its light weight. I wish it were heavier as it tends to want to lift (lean back) when you have a bunch of network cables hanging out of it. Wall mounting is an option, however.
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So I had finally upgraded my Windows XP desktop and my Linux file server so that they both had gigabit network interfaces, but everything was still plugged into a Linksys EZXS88W EtherFast 10/100 8-Port Workgroup Switch, so I wasn't getting any benefit from the faster NICs. I sometimes move rather large files around my home network, so it was time to upgrade. After reading the reviews I decided to try this D-Link DGS-2208 gigabit switch as a replacement.
To see what kind of improvement I got, I performed a file copy benchmark from and to the server both before and after I swapped in the new switch. The file was a 2.87 GB hard disk image from Virtual PC. Here are the results:
Copy from server to PC, Linksys 100M switch: 6:08 (62 Mbps)
Copy from PC to server, Linksys 100M switch: 5:00 (77 Mbps)
Copy from server to PC, D-Link 1000M switch: 1:16 (302 Mbps)
Copy from PC to server, D-Link 1000M switch: 1:23 (277 Mbps)
As you can see, the file copy times were drastically reduced after upgrading to this gigabit switch; my effective network speed increased by about a factor of 4. I was very happy with this result. In case you are wondering why the gigabit transfer rates are nowhere near 1000 Mbps, you have to take into account the other limitations of your hardware such as hard drive speed. You would need extremely fast systems with RAID striping to get anywhere near actual 1000 Mbps performance.
For the record, there were also two 100 Mbps devices plugged into this switch during this test (a print server and an uplink to my router), so the idea that it falls back to the lowest connected speed is nonsense - that is not how switches work. I just got this switch today so I can't say anything about its long term reliability, but if it continues to perform like this it will definitely be a winner.
As far as ergonomics, I like the fact that there are indicator lights that show the device speed (yellow is 100 Mbps, green is 1000 Mbps). For my setup, it's also convenient that the lights and ports are on opposite sides of the switch. This switch is a bit larger than my old Linksys, which was no wider than the 8 ports plus power connector, but it's not too bulky. A documentation CD is included, but there's really no need for it. You just plug this in and go; there's absolutely nothing to configure since it is an unmanaged switch.
I rated this item 4 stars only because its reliability is not yet proven. So far, it has my full recommendation.
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Pros
- low power as advertised - measured the power consumption using kill-a-watt with 2 NAS connected to the switch. The reading was 2 Watt. Swapped the switch to Netgear GS605 (5-port gigabit switch), the reading was 5 Watt. D-link also really does power saving, I disconnect one NAS from the switch, power drops to 1 Watt, and I disconnect the last NAS, power reading drops to 0 Watt. Since I NAS running 24/7, power saving is important as it adds up the cost, I dumped m Netgear gigabit switch and swapped to Dlink
- Plug and Play, Reliable - the thing just worked. I have owning one since Dec 2007, it's been running 24/7 and it does not fail on me yet. I purchased another two recently to expand NAS home network.
Cons
- Outdated outside design - perhaps D-link could work a bit more on on the cosmetic appearance. This switch probably blend into work environment ok but for home I personally think Netgear GS605/GS608 offer a more friendly appearance for home network switch.
- No vertical stand - why D-link doesn't provide a vertical stand for this switch?
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I bought and installed this switch when the previous 5-port D-Link gigabit switch I had in place died. (I also kind of needed the extra ports anyway so the death was a little fortuitous.) As soon as I plugged it in, I saw a dramatic reduction in speeds to the Internet. LAN speeds were fine but WAN download speeds went from >10MBit/s to <2MBit/s. Oddly, upload speeds were unaffected.
Several hours of diagnostics and the only hitch appeared to be the new switch. Thinking I had a bad product, I returned it and got a new one. Same problem. Went out and bought a Linksys switch (model: SD2008), plugged it in, problem solved.
I've been a dedicated D-Link user for years but I'm thinking of giving that up. The 5-port switch I was replacing was just over a year old and the one before that (also D-Link) had all kinds of connectivity issues. It's an unmanaged switch, it should just work!
Anyways, I gave it 3 stars because there's a possibility that I got two bad boxes in a row (there are far too many good reviews here) and the LAN speeds were great. If you buy one, make sure you can take it back easily.
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This switch does exactly what's it'd designed to do. And does it very well. One of the features is power management - automatically shuts down inactive ports to reduce energy consumption. This is supposed to be a good feature but when combined with the same feature on other devices, it becomes bad. For instance, I had my HP laserjet printer plugged into on of the ports on this switch, and when the printer is on power saving mode, the switch senses no activity from the port thus it shut that port off. The end result is that I can no longer print until either device is reset (turn off and turned back on). I ended up plugging the printer directly to the router to fix the problem.
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