D-Link DGS-2208 8-Port 10/100/1000 Desktop Switch
by D-Link Systems, Inc.
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List Price: Our Price: $46.00 You Save: $25.99 (36%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of D-Link DGS-2208 8-Port 10/100/1000 Desktop Switch
Customer Review: outdated review DO NOT GET THIS IF YOU ARE RUNNING MIXED MODE
Summary: 1 Stars
2010 update
My original review is now very outdated and this item will work as advertised
2006 review
HERE IS SOME USEFULL INFO I FOUND
first D-Link makes some great stuff but the D-Link DGS-2208 is not one of them
first tech support is useless they know nothing untill you get a 4-5 level of support (45 min.) the way to get info out of them is to call the (LOCAL) sales desk punch in the keys for presales question
and from that sales desk call "IT WILL NOT WORK WELL IN MIXED MODES" from this info i sent mine back to for a full refund
here are 2 reviews i found
Pros: Fanless. Seems sturdy enough.
Cons: Won't work well for a mixed network.
I bought this swtich hoping to use it with my gigabit connected computers along with my 100mbit connected computers. I checked ahead of time, making sure the description for the product said it could work in a mixed speed network. What they didnt mention, is that if used in a mixed speed network (100mbit and 1000mbit connections to it at the same time) it will run at the slowest connected speed. I found out by noticing it wasnt any faster than my previous 100mbit network. I emailed their tech support asking and they respondeded with
It will run at the slowest speed connected
So this means that if your router, computer, AP, or ANY ethernet device that runs at 100mbit is attached to it, it will make all 8 of its ports run at 100mbit, regarldess if all the other ports have 1000mbit connected devices.
here is another bad one i found
Pros: Jumbo frames, cheap
Cons: Doesnt work worth beans in a mixed speed environment. If you have 2 computers with 100mbit adapters and 2 with 1000mbit adapters, the switch will run ALL ports at 100mbit, effectively making the gigab... More »
it adapters run at 100mbit. Have a 10/100 router or 100mbit adapter in ANY of the computers thats going to be connected to this switch and your wasting your time if you think you can hookup your gigabit adapters and expect gigabit speeds.
Other Thoughts: I wish someone else had mentioned its problem in a review before I bought it. I had checked their product sheet and read through reviews about this switch with no mention that it shunts all ports to the slowest connected speed. There isnt any support on Dlinks website for this product nor knowledgebase. I found out that it shunts the ports to the slowest speed by emailing them and getting a single line response of "It is limited to the slowest connection." with a "internet email confidentiality statement" indicating that the information in the email is intended only for my personal use and is private/confidential. Brilliant
Customer Review: To help clear things up...
Summary: 3 Stars
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 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.
Customer Review: Excellent upgrade over 100 Mbps switches
Summary: 4 Stars
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.
Customer Review: Great for its intended use
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
[...]
Customer Review: Highly recommended; better than Netgear!
Summary: 4 Stars
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.