A reliable piece of network hardware
Written: Feb 03 '03
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Installation: |
 |
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Reliable, competent performer
Cons: Enormous power brick
The Bottom Line: Good performance. Really big power brick
|
|
|
| blakdogg's Full Review: NetGear FS105 (FS105NA) 5x10/100 Mbps Networking S... |
Netgear FS105 10/100 5-port DS Switch w/ Uplink Button
I use this switch to network my three PCs, which allows me to share my broadband connection. I also use the network to access my Linux workstation remotely, this includes simple file serving and running X remotely. The network is generally low traffic with a maximum of two concurrent users.
While I have some experience working with networks, I can think of no possible problems adding a switch to a network. It is quite possibly the most straight forward piece of computing hardware.
Setup
Easy. The switches uplink port is auto sensing, so using it is as simple as just plugging in cables. The switch also features an auto sensing uplink port, which uplinking a matter of simply pluggin in the cable. There is a LED that indicates whether the uplink port is functioning as such. This feature is becoming more common in cheap switches
Performance
It is quite difficult to isolate the performance of a network switch. And not feasible for me to compare the performance of this switch with that of another. I have been able to observe 50+% utilization of the 100Mb network at one of the connected machines. And I believe that the switch is faster than the built in switch on my router. So I would say performance is OK, fast enough for my purposes
Ease of Use
The switch has an enormous transformer, and the plug is connected to this beast directly. This generally renders an adjacent outlet useless. This is also the largest power brick I currently have in my house. Other than that there are no usage issues ... it's a switch.
Reliability
So far this switch has not given me any problems, and I have used it constantly for 6 months.
I purchased the switch as part of a NetGear bundle which saved me more than 50% of the cost. This was my only motivation for choosing the brand or the model but so far the switch has not disappointed. Except for the brick
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 15
Driver Availability: Don't Know
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
blakdogg
|
|
Location: NY
Reviews written: 60
Trusted by: 4 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.