Worth every penny, period

Author's Rating:

Pros: simple to use, fast connection, never disconnects

Cons: price tag was high when originally purchased

The Bottom Line: 
Easy to connect, no drivers, easy to use, very fast; there is no reason not to use this switch!

Author's Review
This switch was originally purchased for approximately $150 last fall at the microwarehouse for my college paper's office. When the Editor and I walked into the store, this product was immeidately recommended. Now I find out why. Please keep in mind that switches are designed to recieve and send "messages" to other computers on the switch in an orderly fashion. Only the computer that the "message" is intended for will recieve it. A hub on the other hand will broadcast the same "message" to every computer, therefore wasting connection space. This alone makes a switch faster than a hub.

Installing the switch in the office was simple. We took the WAN line(the cable from the modem, or router in our case) and plugged it into one of the ports. It doesn't make a difference where it gets put in, as long as it's in. Than, we just plugged all of the computers into the other ports. Right here the switch was not only convienient, but practical as well because they were approximately ten computers that needed to be networked and would have required at least two or three routers to be done any other way.

After all of the computers and the WAN line was plugged in, we plugged the switch power cord in and watched as the little green lights lit up indicating that every computer was properly connected. A quick test revealed that each computer could not only connect to the internet, but could also connect to both of the servers, which are hosted on two of the computers at speeds of up to 100 megabytes per second. In other words, we could share files and connect to the internet at high speeds without any installing any drivers or adjusting any IP addresses or subnet masks.

During the course of the school year, the administration discovered that we were using a switch and demanded that we stop using it immidiately. So I took the switch for home and it's been a blessing here too.

I have a cable modem that plugs into a router which has the switch plugged into one of the connections. From their, several computers and a hub with two computers of its own are all connected to the switch. The connection on every computer touching the switch is amazing. I even changed to a wireless router and the switch continued to work properly without any adjustment needed. All of the computers can see each other and the speed of the connection is now dependant on the host.

There was no programming involved when I set-up this switch, really took plug-n-play to a new level. I have programmed some routers, but I didn't see any information about setting this switch up. This may be in part because I'm almost always using macs, but it isn't especially important considering it works well from the beginning. It should be noted that I have my cousin's PC connected directly to the switch and there are no problems with it. The switch automatically detects full or half duplex, the way information travels, and 10 mps or 100 mps and automatically adjusts.

Physically, there are 24 ethernet ports on this switch; which leaves one for the WAN connection and twenty-three for computers, printers and other network devices. The switch itself is 11.03 in. X 1.73 in X 7.09 in, a flat rectangle that takes up no more space than two or three spiral notebooks stacked together.

In general, this switch can fit nearly everywhere, connect a lot of computers or devices and provide a stable and fast connection. The only question mark with this product is the price tag, which has gone down a lot since we purchased it.