nad_masters's Full Review: Linksys EG008W 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch
What's there to say about a network switch? Well, if you've read my review on the Linksys EG005W 5-port switch, you can see that not all Gigabit network switches are alike. That's because there are some Gigabit switches that either do not support jumbo frames, and some that supports it, but are buggy.
Being buggy is what the EG005W I reviewed before. But that was a previous revision (rev 2). The EG008W reviewed today is an 8-port version of the same product, but is now in rev 3. The look is different, too. Instead of the signature stackable case, the Linksys EG008W is now in a smaller more attractive case.
Linksys EG008W 8-Port Gigabit Network Switch The smaller design is takes up less room than the old network switch, and offers more network ports. I needed the upgrade since I moved to a cubical with just a single network port. Also, the device count on my desk have increased!
The redesign allows the switch to look much sleeker and more attractive. Instead of the corporate dark-blue colors, the new design features a mostly silver color (the top) with an attractive Linksys/Cisco Systems logo in the traditional black and blue colors in a 1.5" by 1.5" square patch on one side of the top. Unfortunately, this mean the new redesign looses the old stackability feature. Of course, nothing will stop you from putting another device on top of this one (relatively flat top), but there are no dents designed for another Linksys device's rubber feet to sit on top of it and stay put like it used to.
The front and sides are dark gray in color, and seem to contrast really well from the silver top (and bottom). The sides are ribbed, where Linksys was able to hide vent slits in between each rib to allow for heat to escape. And yes, this thing does get pretty warm. I find that the warmest part of the network switch is at the front-right of the device.
There are 9 LEDs on the device, each of them are visible from the top and front, thanks to way the lights are wrapped and extends. As you may expect, the 8 LEDs are indicators of connectivity and activity for each of the 8 ethernet ports. A solid green mean there is network connectivity for the port, while a flickering green mean there is network activity for the port. There is no amber color to indicate a slower connection or packet collisions. The last LED indicates power, and is always a solid green when the device is powered up.
In the rear, you have 8 ports, all of which is color coded in orange (which seem to match a standard I may not know of, since I see this on many routers and switches of different brands). There is also a single DC power jack for the AC adapter. It takes a 12v DC power supply that is able to give at least 1A.
The power supply is a power wart, as usually, but is actually slim on the sides so it doesn't take up the other outlets on either sides, which is friendly to power strips. This is a nice touch, and I wish there are more AC adapters for other devices that follow this design. Speaking of design, the adapter doesn't get lost in the crowd, since it's gray in color, and have a unique design and look. The gray plastic is actually semi-glossy, which sticks out amoung the other plugs and cords on my power strip.
On the bottom, you get four thin rubber feet to reduce slippage on a desktop surface, but the thing is so light, that it still gets dragged around by all those heavy CAT5 cables connected to the rear. There are also 2 holes in a plus sign configuration, which means you can mount this in any orientation.
In Use Not much to say here, since it's an unmanaged network switch. You basically power it up, and plug your network devices to it. To connect your devices to the rest of the network, you need at least one port connected to the rest of the network via an ethernet wire, which can either be direct to a router, another network switch, or a cable/DSL modem.
The Linksys EG008W will work with 10, 100, or 1000 Mbit devices, so you do not need to worry about matching speeds. Also, it a 10 or 100 Mbit device will not slow the rest of the gigabit network down, or even the devices connected to the EG008W itself.
Lastly, connecting the EG008W to another network switch or router does not require a crossover cable, since all network ports on this device is auto-MDX, which means it will automatically detect the TX and RX wires and automatically make the port an uplink if needed.
If you don't know what all those mean, don't worry - all it means is you just plug and play! The Linksys EG008W network switch does all the work, making it that mcuh easiser for the user!
Performance With a 100 Mbit connection, I tested a quick file transfer from a local file server. I used a solid 600 MB ISO file containing an image of Windows XP SP2. I was able to muster 80 Mbit/sec (about 10 MB/sec), which is very good!
Using a 1000 Mbit connection, however, evaulating transfer speeds get a bit complicated. Your typical TCP/IP frame size is 1500 bytes in size. This was fine for slower networks, but as speeds ramp up, the smaller frame size causes overhead and slows down faster transfers. The overhead comes from processing all of the error correction for each frame. In order to transfer fast, the smaller frames come in much faster. All of the error correction needs to be calculated. The faster the CPU, the faster the throughput. In order to remedy this, "jumbo" frames need to be supported by all computers in the network, as well as the network switch. Jumbo frames are basically just larger frames, or more specifically, 9000 bytes. Add to the fact that the NIC interface and network chipset really affects the overall speed.
For the gigabit test, a Realtek PCI gigabit network card was used. Set to the standard 1500 bytes MTU (frames), the current set up with Core 2 Duo E2140 (1.6 GHz), I was only able to muster 120 Mbit/sec, which is around 15 MB/sec. It's quicker than 100 Mbit's 10 MB/sec, but it's not the 10x fold improvement the number lead us to believe.
After reading many reviews of the EG008W, it seems that Linksys does not list jumbo frames as a feature on its newest hardware revision. My informal test with 9000 bytes per frame (disconnecting it from the rest of the network, have two PCs with identical gigabit NICs) yielded a 42 MB/sec transfer rate. That's a huge improvement on the standard 1500 byte MTU standard. However, it's still no where near the 1000 Gbit theoretical transfer rate (about 80-90 MB/sec). Linksys may not have listed jumbo frames as a feature of this network switch, but it may actually suppor them if I was able to get better performance from adjusting the two PCs to use larger frames (set both to use 9000 bytes).
Come to think of it, it's not a bad result considering that it's faster than USB 2.0, and even FireWire! Also, remember that there is a lot of overhead. I'm actually impressed!
The Upshot With most SOHO (consumer) gigabit network switches not supporting jumbo frames at all, the Linksys EG008W's undocumented jumbo frame support is really nice. I'm happy to report that Linksys did indeed fix the jumbo frame support in this hardware revision. Performance is excellent, coming close to the theoretical limitations for both 10 and 100 Mbit connections. Gigabit performance is still hampered by the standard frame size of 1500, but with larger frames, the performance zooms way ahead! Hopefully, this frame size will become more standard in the near future.
If you already own Linksys SOHO equipment, the new redisgn of the EG008W does not stack with the rest of your collection of older Linksys network devices. However, if this isn't a priority, your choices for a gigabit network switch have widen.
With no real flaw with the product, and indeed, an improvement (fix) over the old hardware revision, I do recommend the Linksys EG800W 8 port Gigabit network switch for your SOHO needs.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 60 Driver Availability: Windows, Linux, and Mac
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