caradoc's Full Review: D-link DSS 5 Plus 5-Port Ethernet Switch
Earlier today, my venerable 8-port SMC EZ-Stack 5208DS 10/100 switch decided to throw a bearing in the fan and release all of its magic smoke. (Electronic equipment relies on magic smoke to function - this is provable by the fact that the equipment ceases to function if the smoke is released.)
The very fact that this unmanaged switch (meaning that you can't actually control anything on the switch beyond plugging things into it) had a fan in it should tell you something about its age.
Even more telling is the fact that its power supply was internal, and not one of the little black "wall-wart" transformers...
And so, after work, I made a pilgrimage to Fry's Electronics to see what kinds of deals they had on switches. I don't use hubs on my little network here, mostly because they seem to cost about the same these days, and aren't as fast as a switch. Hubs don't do any sort of traffic control beyond the regular Ethernet 802.3 collision detect-and-retransmit (CSMA/CD), while switches can dedicate the entire bandwidth of the cable to connecting one machine to another.
While I was there, I noticed that the D-Link DSS-5+ switches were on sale for $19.99 each, with a $10 rebate. I'd been planning on doing some network segregation here for some time, but never actually got around to it. Instead of buying a single 8-port switch, I bought two of the 5-port switches for about half the cost (after I get my rebate back!)
The old SMC switch had its ports in the front, right under the lights. This meant that the network cables had to snake under the switch and come around the front. This isn't bad if the switch is in a rack, but on a desktop it gets downright painful if you have to relocate anything.
Since the D-Link ports are on the back of the unit, the cables connecting the router, the switch, the DSL box (I can't rightly call it a modem because it is digital and doesn't modulate/demodulate like one that uses a voice line for communications!), and the two servers under that stack all hang behind the desk instead of traveling around the front.
The traffic lights on the front indicate green for 100Base-TX (IEEE 802.3u) traffic (100 megabits per second in half duplex) and amber for 10Base-T (IEEE 802.3) traffic (10 megabits per second in half duplex) and blink when traffic is passing through each port.
Since most of my hardware runs in full duplex, I can theoretically reach speeds of 200Mbps. In practice, I've reached speeds of 180Mbps in transmitting files from one machine to another on the same switch, with some degradation of speed at intermediate hops (like my router and my firewall).
I've heard from some people that they think that the Ethernet standards are unnecessarily complex, and nobody really knows the difference between IEEE 802.3, 802.3u, 802.3g, or any of the others, but the labels are very specific for a reason: they are industry standards and if they don't meet very exact criteria for data transmission, they simply will not work. So, I won't bore you with all of the little technical specifications. If you're interested, you know where the "view details" link is up at the top.
Each port is capable of MDI-X autonegotiation, meaning you don't have to worry about putting a straight-through or a crossover cable in any particular port, or flipping any little switches to make the switch talk to another switch or hub. It just sorts things out by itself and gives you a link light if everything's OK.
If the top of this review still shows a dark gray box in the picture, it's old. The DSS-5+ is now as stylish as the rest of the D-Link line, with rounded edges, a dark gray left side, and matte silver for the rest of the case. The D-Link logo is molded into the top, and the little rubber feet can match up with slots in the top of another D-Link product of the same size to make things stack up nicely with little danger of the tiny box (it's about 4.5" deep, 7" wide, and about 1.5" tall as compared with my old 19" wide by 12" deep by 3" tall SMC!) slipping off the back of the desk and getting lost amongst the cables.
One problem: the DSS-5+ is considerably smaller than my D-Link DI-614+ wireless broadband router, and the little feet will line up on one side, but make the stack sit slightly crooked. I may shave one side with an X-Acto knife to make them sit level, but it would be nice to get an extra set of feet that don't have the little "locking" ridge on them.
The "Plug-and-Play" label on the box is no lie, but you will need to make sure that your network addresses all agree - mixing subnets on the same switch is generally a recipe for no communication at all unless you've got a router and know what to do with it. Unless you've got something managing your network addresses, like a DCHP server in a "broadband firewall router" like the D-Link DI-614+, you'll need to make sure you've got all of your addresses straight before communication can take place!
Using two 5-port switches to segregate my home network is a lot cheaper than buying a managed switch. An 8-port managed switch starts in the $300 range. I spent a tenth of that to do what I need with the two unmanaged switches and a router I already had. The five-year warranty is just the icing on the cake!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 19.99 Driver Availability: Other
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