Netgear ProSafe Plus 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch

great little switch
the initial review was a bit unfair. currently this switch doesnt have any major problems. for the windows part, well, tough life... definetely not showstopper though (i am linux user too).

i would dare anybody here to find a better gigabit switch for this money (honestly want to find out if there is one):
- is fully compatible with intel gigabit cards
- has upgradable firmware
- has vlan support
Good switch (after firmware upgrade)
As "Mat" pointed out with his review, the switch does have some issues out of the box. The fact it responds to any ping is quite bad, and something netgear should have picked up on during testing. That said, firmware is now available from their site which solves this issue, and also reduces its power usage.

I've been using this switch for over a month solid now and I'm quite impressed with it. It has a much lower power usage than my others, and also seems more stable when pushing through large amounts of data. I wish in many ways that I had bought the larger version as it would save me needing to buy another one ;)

It does require you to use a Windows app to manage it (which is annoying to a Linux user), but thats only for vlan configuration and firmware updating. Once you have it configured how you want, it just works :-)
(less) Disappointing from Netgear
Be aware that when the technical details say that Windows Vista/XP are required, that's to be taken seriously, this switch is only manageable via a windows app (which, annoyingly, is an Adobe Air app, so could be cross platform).

Also, this switch doesn't handle pings correctly - it responds from it's own IP address too, causing duplicate responses, and messing up the ping results.

(the ping problem exists on firmware version 1.00.07)

[UPDATE 11/11/2011 : I just remembered that I had left this review, and thought it only fair to come back and update, to mention that the ping problem has been fixed by netgear with a firmware update (I can't recall the number off the top of my head), so in light of that, and the fact that the switch has been sat doing it's thing without hanging or needing a restart for well over a year, I've upped my rating from three stars to four]

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