NETGEAR 8 Port PoE Switch, Managed Gigabit LAN Switch GS308EP

I bought this switch as part of my home networking setup to power four PoE security cameras, while also connecting my 24/7 Home Assistant and Frigate server to the network. So far, it has been excellent. The biggest advantage for me is having PoE and Gigabit networking in one unit. I can run a single Ethernet cable to each camera for both power and data, which makes the installation much cleaner than having separate power supplies everywhere. With 8 PoE+ ports and a 123W total PoE budget, there is also plenty of room to add more devices later. I particularly wanted a managed switch rather than a basic unmanaged PoE switch. The VLAN and port-management options are useful for a home setup where you want more control over what your cameras and IoT devices can communicate with. For example, you can use VLANs to separate cameras/IoT equipment from your main devices, depending on how your network is configured. The switch supports 802.1Q VLAN tagging and port-based VLANs. This is especially useful with Frigate and Home Assistant, as I prefer keeping my CCTV footage and smart-home devices locally processed rather than relying on cloud services. Another big plus is that it's fanless and silent. Since my Home Assistant/Frigate system runs 24/7, I really appreciate not having another noisy fan running in the background. The build quality also feels very good, and the compact metal enclosure is easy to position. It can be used on a desk or wall mounted, which gives you some flexibility when setting up your network equipment. A few technical points I like: 8 × Gigabit Ethernet ports 8 × PoE+ 802.3at ports 123W total PoE budget VLAN support Port-based VLANs PoE power management and prioritisation 16Gbps switching capacity Fanless/silent operation Desktop or wall mounting For someone building a home CCTV, Home Assistant, NAS or small homelab setup, I think this is a really good middle ground between a basic plug-and-play PoE switch and a much more complicated enterprise networking setup. Very happy with it so far and exactly what I needed for my home network.

Simpler than Mikrotik SWOS (and uses https!) more reliable than a Unifi and nicer looking than a Draytek. I had a Unifi switch which one day just forgot what VLANs I'd configured and chose its own. Wasted a couple of hours of my day, so I decided it was for the bin, to be replaced by a simple web UI and an IP address. Netgear have made a great small switch which fitted the wall mounting screws I'd used for the Unifi US8. The configuration went well until I tried to put the management VLAN onto anything other than untagged VLAN 1 so had to leave it there, which is probably my least preferred VLAN to leave important things in. The advanced VLAN configuration is still a bit weird, very port-centric rather than VLAN centric, but it works if you forget everything you know from Cisco land. It's correctly tagging and leaving native all the traffic I need. Performance has been what I expected. POE has been good although the older Unifi APs won't power up as they're not standards-based POE, unsurprisingly, so still left with an injector or two.

As always Netgear quality, easy to setup, and limit power if required

Nothing wrong with the switch but a European mains cord has been supplied and there's no installation guide. As it happens I've found a suitable mains cable lying around and I can get by without an installation guide.

I bought this to power a Wifi extender, However it only powers network devices that it can talk to and negotiate a voltage, you cannot manually turn power on on a single port for legacy devices that do not negotiate with the hub.

I've been using the same switches for 15 years now in all sorts of scenarios. They are flexible, powerful, well-built, easy to programme and manage. The VLAN settings are a little tricky to navigate, but if you're smart enough to use VLANs in the first place, you'll work it out. I've got some of these that have been running for 10 years +. Hard to beat these days.

Not cheap, but well worth it. Plug and play, perfect for driving home Wifi extensions 💯

Grabbed this to resolve a power and broadcast issue i was having with my POE+ cameras, worked a treat!