An Excellent Business-Level Switch for Half the Price
Written: May 26 '03
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Pros: Stable & Fast Performance; Easy Installation; Easy to Read LED Status Interface
Cons: No Upgradeable Firmware; No Built-In Browser Interface
The Bottom Line: Whether you run your own LAN party, or have a small church group to cater to, this switch will meet and exceed your every expectation.
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| express15_99's Full Review: Linksys EtherFast 4124 24-Port Ethernet Switch (EF... |
I am the co-founder of a LAN party here in Chicago called Xtreme LAN, and I also happen to be the network administrator as well. What is a LAN party, you ask? Well, it’s a “party” where a bunch of PC gamers gather to play different games over a closed LAN (Local Area Network), drink lots of caffeine, and eat a ton of pizza. Our first event came along and I had a list of things I needed to purchase, and one of them was a switch that could support our traffic-intensive network, wouldn’t crash on us, and was easy to set up and install on location whenever our next LAN party came along. After some research, I chose the Linksys EF4124 as our savior for many reasons. First, apart from having great reviews on the net about its stability and performance, the features that it offers are unparallel to other switches in the same price range. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. You may not even know what a switch is or what it does, so lets clear up some ???’s right now.
A switch, if you have never seen or heard of one, is a simple (okay, it’s pretty complex) device that allows a number of computers to interconnect with each other through a spaghetti of network cables that all come to a common connection point: the switch. A switch is similar to a HUB (the more primitive cousin of a switch) in that it allows you to create a LAN of computers, but there are differences that make a switch a much more dependable choice. One thing that might appeal to many is that a HUB is almost always cheaper than a switch of the same caliber. This is because HUBs are not as efficient as switches because they run at only half-duplex. Think of this as a one-lane highway, where both incoming and ongoing traffic is trying to get by on the same road. For one car to pass, another has to pull over and let it by. A switch, on the other hand, handles data much better. It uses a super-fast two-lane highway that allows simultaneous traffic to go both ways. It also sends data to its intended recipient instead of sending the data to every possible computer, as is done by a HUB. This is why switches can have every port (one port is assigned to each computer; it is where a computer connects to the switch via a network cable, and the data that goes into and out from the computer goes through its own port) work at it’s maximum speed, either 10/100/1000 Mbps. If you got all that, then now we can move on.
I won’t lie. The switch cost me a measly $100 on Amazon.com (usually the place I find the best bargains on computer hardware, surprisingly) but I cannot regret the purchase I made for our LAN party. I know that most LAN parties choose to invest in much larger, corporate-level switches that have a bunch of unneeded bells & whistles that smaller but demanding users will most likely never use their fullest extent. But for us, this switch is plenty. First off, the EF4124 offers 24 ports of full-duplex speed, which is what a LAN party needs when playing heated battles of BF 1942 or Unreal Tournament 2003. Another thing that surprised me right off the bat was how (extremely) easy it is to set up. You would think that this type of hardware would require 2 hours of manuals, a half hour of troubleshooting, and an actual hour of installation and connecting. If you can take this switch out of its rather nice packaging, put in on a flat table, connect its industry standard 120V power cable, and connect each and every ethernet cable to its proper port, then you are officially ready to use the Linksys EF4124. I know that there are many people out there that aren’t needy for a corporate-level switch but still want the performance and features of such a switch for their business, church group, or LAN party.
In regards to ease of use, the LED interface that Linksys has beautifully crafted for this switch and others in the same line of products is very easy to read and distinguish what is going on with your network at any given time. The usual power LED tells you if your switch is turned on and functioning. The 24 connection ports individually tell you if they are connected and online, and also if they are having data collisions or not (something common in the world of HUBs). While at our LAN parties, when I need to quickly glance and see if everyone is on the network or not, I can easily peek at the LED layout and tell whether or not someone is connected. This is a time-saving feature that I have to give Linksys credit for to the fullest extent.
If you decide that you want to connect this switch to a larger network or just give everyone on your network internet access, you will be pleased to know that EVERY single port is uplinkable and has WAN connectivity. In plain English, if you have a DSL or cable line you want to share with everyone else, just pick a port and plug in. Or, if you have another network of computers that is on a separate switch, pick a port to connect to from your existing switch, and you may use either crossover or regular patch cables. Many other switches make separate ports for Uplink and WAN connectivity, and those uplink ports also disable your first port on the switch. Linksys decided to go a step further and just provide ethernet, WAN, and uplink connectivity to each and every port on the entire switch. I call that ingenuity at work.
Some other small quirks that I love about this switch are its small size and rack-mounting capability. When I received it in the mail, I was a little shocked at how small it turned out to really be. When I read “rack-mounting” I immediately thought of something large, bulky, and not transportable. It turned out that this switch is a little wider than a 12-inch ruler, and not any taller than a thick novel. For me, this is awesome because I have to transport it between my house, my XLAN parties, and my frequenting to local XBOX LANs. As well as being small, it also allows you to mount it in a switch-rack locale such as in a business environment or school where uplinking of 3 or more switches is common. Even though this is nothing that will come into use by me, it will come in handy to many others.
There are not many objections I have with the EF4124, but I will elaborate on the few that I do have. One of the things I dislike about this switch is that it does not feature the web-browser based interface that some other Linksys products have. What this is handy for is in case you want to change certain configurations on port access or other similar things by typing in a default IP address. The other thing I have a sort of let-down about is the fact that you can’t upgrade the switch’s firmware (the software that runs the switch itself). Other than these two things, there are no other bad things I have to say about this excellent product.
For $100, I couldn’t have asked for anything more. I have been using Linksys for almost all of my networking needs. This switch is just another addition to my list of my quality Linksys products such as the BEFSR41 4-Port Router and (2) LNE100TX Ethernet Cards. If you are in a situation similar to mine, or have the same needs, I would highly recommend you look into this switch made by a greatly reputable company. I have not come into any problems ever since I started using it, and I don’t expect any to come up.
**For more information on my LAN party, please visit www.XtremeLAN.cjb.net. Even though this LAN party is not open to public invitation yet, take a look at what we are about.
-RATINGS-
Features: 9.0 (out of 10)
Stability: 9.6
Performance: 9.4
Design: 8.8
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 100.00
Driver Availability: Other
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Epinions.com ID:
express15_99
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Location: Chicago, IL
Reviews written: 100
Trusted by: 4 members
About Me:
4 More Years of Bush = 4 More Years of Great Reviews by ME!
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