Every geek's LAN takes on unhealthy proportions at some point or another. At first, it's just two machines, his and her's. Then a fileserver. Then a media server. Then a Bluray player. Next thing you know you know you've got network cables running through every room of your dwelling. When that happens, you need a switch.

The DGS-100XD series by D-Link are probably the company's favorite consumer switches, with reason. I bought mine about a year and a half ago, and it hasn't yet disappointed me. 

Spec-wise, this switch isn't all that impressive, boasting what I think consumer are to EXPECT from a product like this. This unmanaged switch uses store and forward switching, supports full duplex gigabit ethernet and supposedly jumbo frames (more on that later). However, for the price, it very often (depending on the retailer) comes well below the price point of similar offerings from the competition. 

Like all other consumer level switches, this device is unmanaged, meaning that it's operation is entire plug and play, so using it doesn't get any harder than plugging in all your components. The DGS-100XD also supports auto-detection of cross-over or regular patch cables, which eliminates another hassle when uplinking to routers or other switches.

In the real world, this switch performs great. I frequently abuse of my local area network by streaming media from a home server, downloading torrents, and powerbrowsing the internet simultaneously, and never once have I felt that my switch was limiting my network's performance. On file transfers, I have routinely broken the 35 megabytes per second transfer rates, which makes using my home server for storage just as conveniant as using local drives.

This switch also advertises it's "green" features, amongst which include voltage regulation based on cable length and the status of the machines connected. The 25% savings on electricity sounds awesome, but don't be fooled by claims in percentage: the power usage peaks at 7.5 watts anyways, and even if you were to save the 25% advertised, you still wouldn't be able to see those 1.875 watts on your power bill. The only advantage I can see if probably the lower thermal design of the "Green" version, which might give the switch an additional year or two of service.

My only woe on this switch is the confusion on it's support of 9k jumbo frames. It would seem that only revisions C3 and later of the device support big frames, although D-Link blantantly advertises full jumbo frame support without mentionning this. My model has it, so I would guess that every machine on the shelves these days features full support, but keep your receipts until you are definitely sure. 

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 45
Driver Availability: Other