Managing the Unmanaged Switch

zokier 5 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

[delayed]

stephen_g 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Cool hack - I have the ‘smart’ managed version of that switch (although the PoE version of it I think), and it looks exactly the same to the unmanaged one - absolutely makes sense that it’s basically identical (just a BOM change for the different flash to fit the larger firmware).

Often it’s way cheaper to have one hardware version and control features in firmware, and that principle is even more true for silicon (same die but fuses that are blown to disable parts of it, or the chip clocked down because it might not perform properly at the speed of the more expensive SKU), so not surprising it’s this way!

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StillBored 44 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

8051! I love it. Its like running web stacks on these ESP8266's without the crypto acceleration.

But at the same time, we have to stop pretending that 1Gbit Ethernet isn't utterly obsolete in the same way that RS-232 is. Useful maybe for low power, longish reach, but its slower than a good number of internet connections now, and the wifi on the other end too.

Ex: My house, turns out the 1Gbit uplink from the ISP provided hardware to my firewall was causing me to lose 300MB because it was actually provisioned at 1.3Gbit, and when I switched it to 5Gbit, my Wifi got faster.. Ex, I can get in excess of 1Gbit in about 2/3rds of my house now to sites on the internet.

1GbaseT is 27 year old technology this year, 10GbaseT is 20 this year, and by any other computing metric should be obsolete too since there has been a 25GbaseT spec for 10 years that no one has bothered to manufacture. And here in 2026, double or more should be easy with modern phy technology, and with proper line quality could easily be all of dynamic power, dynamic length and dynamic speeds over a range of cable types and length, both running at lower power and higher performance.

	▲	yjftsjthsd-h 30 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I dunno, I'd like to see faster options taking off but last time I checked they were just starting to get cost-effective. I'm not paying a factor more for 10GbaseT when I don't actually need that kind of speed.
	▲	tracker1 21 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I'm a bit irked that there aren't more, less expensive 10gb 10baseT ethernet switches available. I have one that I have as my main connection in the wiring closet (need to get my NAS back in there), and a few 2.5gb switches off of that (one in my office)... mostly because I just didn't want to shell out the dramatically more expensive option.
	▲	zokier 18 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> there has been a 25GbaseT spec for 10 years that no one has bothered to manufacture because dealing with fiber is easier than cat8 copper. unless you want poe there is very little reason to use base-t.
	▲	BizarroLand 15 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I believe this to be a utility issue. In the average home network, having greater than a gig networking provides little value for the center of the bell curve of users. Maybe its different outside of America but most people in America have less than 1gbps internet connections, and have little need to transfer data in-house from one location to another that the time saved by having a 5, 10, or 25gbps connection would benefit them in any measurable way. Even for those people who run NAS systems for extra storage will only saturate gigabit connections occasionally, and being able to save a few hours a year waiting for transfers to complete is likely not worth the initial setup effort and costs for them. I'm a bit of a techie, and my house is wired for 10gbps internally, but no isp in my area offers more than 1gbps, and I live in a well-to-do and densely populated area near to many tech companies. So, in short, 1gbps is not obsolete. It probably should be, but it still meets the needs of the great majority of people that use it.

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superkuh 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Watch out, I'm not sure about the SG108 but the SG108E has a known defect where it incorrectly broadcasts non-VLAN traffic across all ports, regardless of configured VLAN settings. https://community.tp-link.com/en/business/forum/topic/89181

I have confirmed this with my own version 1 SG108E (which additionally can't actually be managed without an ancient version of java and iptables /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward forwarding tricks. https://shred.zone/en/dev/setting-up-tp-link-tl-sg108e-with-...)

I'd say stay far away from this hardware line unless you actually do just want a dumb switch. If you do buy make sure you know exactly what hardware revision you're getting. I've heard the version 5 fixes it.

	▲	toast0 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I had the 24 port version of these. They're fine for 'cooperative vlans' where you trust everything (enough), but want a little separation. But they're not sufficient if you don't trust the devices. You can't restrict management to specific vlans and iirc, there was a least one auth bypass. At least for the version I had. I replaced it with some used smb stuff with a few 10g ports, cause unnecessary 10g is more fun.

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walrus01 42 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

In very cost sensitive applications where you want 'managed' and 'cheap' like security cameras for an ordinary house, the best non hack solution I've found is to have something like a basic managed non-PoE switch, and then hang a dumb switch downstream of it for the sole purpose of aggregating something like IP cameras.

For example some of the cheaper unmanaged 8-port 802.3af/at switches with enough power budget for 7 cameras. Average traffic from a single camera isn't a lot, easily fitting in a single 1000BaseT link to the managed switch. Put the whole dumb switch in the camera vlan.