TP-Link TL-SG105E - 5-Port Gigabit Easy Smart Switch

seller shipped it out relatively quickly. packed well. Functionality:just a simple basic unmanaged switch with 802.1Q vlan, LAG, jumbo frame and some QoS features. power consumption claims are lower than competitors for the price as well. only issue is the firmware is different from larger tp link easy managed switches. admin password is alphanumeric and underscore only so passwords can't be aligned.

For under $25 this was the answer to how could I have more than one device in a bedroom that need...

For under $25 this was the answer to how could I have more than one device in a bedroom that needed to be directly plugged in to the Internet. This bedroom was at the far end of the house and the Wi-Fi would not take care of keeping my devices online. I had an ethernet cable run to the bedroom so that at least one device could be plugged in. For a long time that cat5 Cable was plugged into my computer that I used to work from home. I recently added an Apple TV box and would have to manually change which device was plugged in. It was a giant pain. And I mean that physically. The plug is behind a cabinet and getting back there to plug in and unplug it every time you wanna switch devices was physically painful. Introduced the switchbox! I just plugged it in and then ... MoreFor under $25 this was the answer to how could I have more than one device in a bedroom that needed to be directly plugged in to the Internet. This bedroom was at the far end of the house and the Wi-Fi would not take care of keeping my devices online. I had an ethernet cable run to the bedroom so that at least one device could be plugged in. For a long time that cat5 Cable was plugged into my computer that I used to work from home. I recently added an Apple TV box and would have to manually change which device was plugged in. It was a giant pain. And I mean that physically. The plug is behind a cabinet and getting back there to plug in and unplug it every time you wanna switch devices was physically painful. Introduced the switchbox! I just plugged it in and then ran both Ethernet cords to the box and now they both have fantastic Internet :-) I am in love with this box! Has it made life simpler? Yes! Has it made my life less painful? Yes definitely. Has it reduce the stress in my life? Yes I highly recommend it. It was super simple to hook up, worked right out of the box, and so far its working perfectly. And for under 25 bucks I couldnt be more thrilled.

Not just a simple switch!

This is a managed switch with many capabilities. I bought it specifically to use for things like Wireshark packet sniffing for debugging network issues because you can set up a port that will repeat all traffic on the other ports not just the traffic destined for your MAC address, but it can do much more than that. It has QoS capabilities, VLANs etc...WARNING: One big gotcha you have to worry about right out of the box is the default IP address on this switch. It is 192.169.0.1 which is a VERY common address for things like routers. Many Rogers and Bell routers default to 192.168.0.1 and this results in an IP address conflict and can cause issues. I recommend the first thing you do it plug a PC into the switch that is manually configured with a 192.168.0.X IP ... MoreThis is a managed switch with many capabilities. I bought it specifically to use for things like Wireshark packet sniffing for debugging network issues because you can set up a port that will repeat all traffic on the other ports not just the traffic destined for your MAC address, but it can do much more than that. It has QoS capabilities, VLANs etc...WARNING: One big gotcha you have to worry about right out of the box is the default IP address on this switch. It is 192.169.0.1 which is a VERY common address for things like routers. Many Rogers and Bell routers default to 192.168.0.1 and this results in an IP address conflict and can cause issues. I recommend the first thing you do it plug a PC into the switch that is manually configured with a 192.168.0.X IP address and use a web browser to connect to 192.168.0.1, login with default username and password for TL-SG105E which is admin and admin and in the System>>IP Setting configuration screen set the IP to something different and save the config. I chose 192.168.0.200 for mine as that is out of the range usually assigned by DHCP on most routers or high enough that most will not have enough devices to hit that and conflict, but you can also set the switch to use DHCP and that should avoid all issues.I have not used to configuration software that came with it yet as I could do what I needed through the web interface so far but you may need to use that for more complicated setups.

Review of TP-LINK TL-SG105E Network Switch - 5 port

Good Points: I needed a small switch to join a two or three devices to the end of our wired internet and this Switch did that job.Improvement Points: Too many Switches still will not do more than 1 Gigabit per second aand this is one of those. I do a lot of large-scale backups to servers and I now have the principal devices and servers on a backbone network of 10 Gigabit per second. I would like to extend this to the peripherals as well. When will we get 10 Gbit per second on small switches? And at a reasonable price?

Super Switch

This little 5 port switch is just what we needed, in fact, we have the 8 port too. Its metal casing makes it tough, very energy efficient and a great price. The fact we can setup the items we need without needing to configure lots of complicated stuff was/is just ideal.The interface to the switch is very easy to work with, there are not a huge amount of options, but enough to make this a very useful little addition to our small network.The 5 Port switch plugs into our router and basically controls things hitting the router from the wired machines, this is very useful for things like VOIP/SKYPE where we can setup the QoS for the ports coming from the 8 port, which is in turn setup to prioritise certain ports over others.We are looking to turn of the Wi-Fi on ... MoreThis little 5 port switch is just what we needed, in fact, we have the 8 port too. Its metal casing makes it tough, very energy efficient and a great price. The fact we can setup the items we need without needing to configure lots of complicated stuff was/is just ideal.The interface to the switch is very easy to work with, there are not a huge amount of options, but enough to make this a very useful little addition to our small network.The 5 Port switch plugs into our router and basically controls things hitting the router from the wired machines, this is very useful for things like VOIP/SKYPE where we can setup the QoS for the ports coming from the 8 port, which is in turn setup to prioritise certain ports over others.We are looking to turn of the Wi-Fi on the router and purchase an access point so we can gain some control over the traffic coming over wireless too and will be looking to purchase a router with some more in depth QoS so we can prioritise traffic by type for example.Though for some folks, this may seem a bit basic for a ‘managed’ switch, because of course it is not a fully managed switch in many regards.However it suits us fine, we don’t want to spend an age configuring and administering the thing but felt we could benefit from a move from a standard, non-managed switch, to an easy smart switch offering basic control over such things as prioritisation via QoS, flow control, bandwidth control and port trunking.I would recommend the units to anyone considering a similar move or before jumping to fully managed as it will allow you figure out if it’s actually useful to you or not, and even if you decide not to use the management options on the switch in the end, you will have yourself a very good, energy efficient switch, and the price is very easy to live with as introduction to this type of unit.MrBee