Cheap 2.5g switch?

Cyber-Mav

Cyber-Mav

Cyber-Mav

Soldato
Joined
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Seen some cheapo switches that have 4 x 2.5g and 2 x 10g ports.
Can get for under 30 quid.
Anyone using them? Reviews seem to be good but need first hand accounts from forum users.
 
They'll be the same chips that the more expensive switches use, there might be cheaper magnetics on them and a really rough power supply and AC adapter that will borderline kill you. If I was buying AliExpress stuff or the equivalent six-letter made up brand that has made it to Amazon I'd at least want something that had a USB-C power input so I could use my own power supply for it. Something sourced in China for £2 that weighs 50g shouldn't be plugged into the mains, best case scenario is the glue holding it together fails and you end up with live parts exposed on your wall ready for your child to run into.
 
I got one as an interim upgrade when my wan connection went 1.2/1. Initially I ran Untangle/WRT/Sense on a dual i225 rev c. based card just for the extra bandwidth, then broke that out from the router to the switch and i226's in each server, 2.5Gb/s worked without issue, but those two SFP+ ports were just begging to be used. Pretty quickly after that I pushed SFP+ cards to each server and top out at 8Gb/s. I then upgraded my core to an Aruba 1930 with 4xSFP+ and 195w PoE++ and relegated the Chinese stuff to floor switches - run fibre to each floor and then one of them to break out to copper, as an when devices support 2.5Gb/10Gb it's already in place. In total i'll have pushed way over 1Pb over the original switch and it's not let me down yet.
 
I paid £70 for a Zyxel 5-Port 2.5G Multi-Gigabit Unmanaged Switch a year ago and it's been faultless. With the pace that things are moving on, I expect you can get better now, but my motherboards only have 2.5gig ports on them, and I have little need for a 10gig switch at the moment.
 
Skilid said:
I paid £70 for a Zyxel 5-Port 2.5G Multi-Gigabit Unmanaged Switch a year ago and it's been faultless. With the pace that things are moving on, I expect you can get better now, but my motherboards only have 2.5gig ports on them, and I have little need for a 10gig switch at the moment.
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The Zyxel MG-105? I use that switch as well. :)
 
Caged said:
They'll be the same chips that the more expensive switches use, there might be cheaper magnetics on them and a really rough power supply and AC adapter that will borderline kill you. If I was buying AliExpress stuff or the equivalent six-letter made up brand that has made it to Amazon I'd at least want something that had a USB-C power input so I could use my own power supply for it. Something sourced in China for £2 that weighs 50g shouldn't be plugged into the mains, best case scenario is the glue holding it together fails and you end up with live parts exposed on your wall ready for your child to run into.
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Say what you really mean :D

Although I have to agree, I wouldn't want them either at home or at work just for the sake of saving a few quid.

Personally I'm using the Qnap QSW-2104-2T at work and it's been flawless
 
Armageus said:
Say what you really mean :D

Although I have to agree, I wouldn't want them either at home or at work just for the sake of saving a few quid.

Personally I'm using the Qnap QSW-2104-2T at work and it's been flawless
Click to expand...
Have the same QNAP here at home also. Got it before these cheaper ones took off, but I also wanted something that's been out longer so any existing issues would have been more known about and solutions or options for solutions are available to go for if needed (including RMA). Hence I took the QNAP.

Thankfully the issue that so many others have ran into from online searches, where the QNAP will reset itself every so often, needing a reboot to fix, had a simpler solution in my case; one of the systems connected to the network had a bad network design (my fault) - it had two lines running on different paths to the QNAP (10g and 1g connections). And when the system crashed and lost boot up options, it tried to boot off the network, and that's when it creates a network loop (storm) that stalls the QNAP and it tries to reboot the network to clear it, but all it does is reset the connection every time instead for a few moments before it falls over again and it tries again. Going through the BIOS options in the secondary system I found the boot up PXE options and disabled them. No issues since.

That's not likely something you can find if something falls over with the newer 2.5/hybrid China/unbranded devices.
 
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The flaky UI and reliability on a managed Hasivo switch I tried was enough to make me think it wasn’t worth persevering with. Some talk of firmware fixes on the STH forums but trying to get anything from the Hasivo store on aliexpress was worse than the switch itself.
 
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