NETGEAR GS908E-100NAS - Discontinued by Manufacturer

Want a L 2.5 gigabit switch? Good value. I bought this for far less than it should have cost. The cable management part is a bit flawed. Still this is really good.

The first thing that I need to point out here is the fact that NETGEAR has configured this description page for numerous different models of their switches. So, the 5-star rating you will see at the top is completely meaningless, since it is only an average of all their different models put together. Many of these models have absolutely nothing in common other than the fact that they are all switches made by NETGEAR. Some of these models have only 4 ports while others have 48 ports. Some are commercial models while others are home models. Some are new models, others are legacy. Accordingly, most of these reviews are meaningless unless you check to make sure that the product being reviewed is the one you are interested in. The specific model is listed at the top of each review in gray. This is not obvious unless you are looking for it though. Now, on to the actual product... This item (GS908E) is a managed 8 port switch that is mainly aimed at the home networking market. It sits on a desktop or can be mounted on a wall with included screws. It is not rack mountable nor is it made of metal. Its all plastic construction does not really lend itself to a business or industrial market. One of the key features of this model is the fact that it is a managed switch. That is, it has a web interface that you can use to change settings like VLAN, QoS, port assignments, etc. As managed switches go, this model has a rather bare-bones number of options that will usually suffice for home use but does not offer the options you would typically find in a multi-port managed business switch. The product also comes with two USB ports, which can be used for charging most wireless devices, tablets, etc. I compared charging times with a number of other cellphone chargers that I had on hand and it seems on par with most rapid chargers if only 1 USB port is used. It definitely outperforms the standard chargers that come with most cellphones these days. The entire unit runs on a 2.5VDC power supply, which means that the USB ports can not simultaneously rapid charge two different devices. So, it is better than a completely cheap-o charger port, but not quite as fast as a dedicated rapid charger directly connected to an electrical outlet. The USB ports can ONLY be used for charging. They can not be used to connect networked devices or external hard drives. One puzzling aspect of this switch is the cable management feature, which supposedly hides your Ethernet plugs from view by routing them through notches built into the case. This would work great if the notches were wide enough for an Ethernet cable to fit through, but unlike in the photos the notches are only wide enough if you are using CAT 5 ribbon cable, which cant even connect at Gigabit Ethernet speeds. The pictures that NETGEAR shows of these notches are not what the actual product looks like. I will post photos of what the product actually looks like after I upload this review. The notches are not even wide enough for a USB cable to fit through, let alone regular CAT 5/5e/6. It is difficult to show in the pictures, but trust me, Ethernet cables will NOT fit through these notches and the top of the switch can not close completely because of this defect. The majority of home networking installations will NOT need to use the management features of this switch. Fortunately, the switch is shipped in a default dumb mode, which effectively acts as a plain, unmanaged network switch. The management features can be easily accessed through a web menu for activation though. The web interface is another feature that is definitely aimed at consumers rather than businesses as there is no login name and no ability to assign different logins. Of course, the default password is password which makes unauthorized access to this device stupidly simple, since most people never bother to change the default password and in this case can not change the login name. Once the switch is properly set-up, it should be pretty much hassle-free. While I would much rather have the device in a sturdier metal housing the plastic enclosure is thin and blends in to most home networking environments quite easily. It also has an option to turn off the external LEDs, which is great if you have it installed in a bedroom and hate the annoying LED flashes. One interesting feature of this switch is the ability to set up what it calls Link Aggregation Groups, which is supposed to result in giving your network failsafe redundancy or more aggregated bandwidth. Honestly, I was not able to understand how this feature worked fully. The documentation is pretty thin on this feature and I still have no idea if it provides redundancy on the same network or on different networks. This would be quite a premium feature if it aggregated multiple networks, but I can not find any settings in the interface that would allow me to do this. NETGEAR definitely needs to provide better documentation or some examples of how this feature is supposed to work. Conclkusion: On the whole, this product is a pretty good deal for a managed network switch. It definitely is not suitable for business use, but for home use it should work fine. The cable management feature does not work as shown in the photos, so I dont really consider it a feature. The external USB connections for charging devices is adequate, but not up to the task of rapid charging two devices. If you are looking for a decent Ethernet switch with a small subset of features, this might just be the model for you. It certainly could be a much better product with a few modifications though.

This is a simple ethernet switch with some basic management features. Its been rock-solid, have not noticed any bottlenecks. Also includes a basic VLAN. I have two ISPs in my house. Ive put the two modem outputs to this switch then created two VLANS to two different routers. Works well. Allows me to bring cabling to one point then route it out.

This switch works exactly how I need it to. Its a great distribution switch for my home lab and the GUI is straight forward and easy to understand even if you arent a networking person.

Easy to install and has a large suite of port control capability. I actually didnt need a managed port device but this was cheaper than the unmanaged version.

My family room has a smart TV, game system, gaming PC, and external storage. This allowed me to pull a single cable from my router into the family room and then wire everything from this switch. In this configuration it can get slower if everything is requesting internet data at once, but it works much better than wireless and typically is not an issue (we dont watch a movie and game at the same time.) This switch has worked without complaints. We have two Logitech remote control units that are powered by USB ports, so I was able to remove two plugs for those to open a space for the router and then power the Logitech remotes through the USB ports on this device. It worked out well.

The cable management is flawed. The initial product pictures shows the plastic guides as wide and rounded, you know, for ethernet cables to be routed through, but apparently by the time they sent the GS908E for mass production, the plastic guide piece wasnt cut properly. Ive included a picture of the actual product with a cable that doesnt fit (on the left), with the back of the box behind and to the right with a picture of what they thought it was supposed to look like.

Stay away from NetGear products in general. This little beauty was only about $16 or $17 but when it broke down after about a week or so it not only took 10 days to resolve with NetGear, thats 10 days with my network in a shambles, but they were nice enough to make me pay the return shipping on the defective switch, thats right, the switch that they screwed up I had to pay to return before they would send me a replacement and the cost of shipping $13.65!!! This is the last time I buy from NetGear, this is just horrible customer service to make a customer pay twice the price for an item that they screwed up on, NEVER AGAIN! , 8/15/20: Update, Now the second one has failed, not sending it back, Ive already paid $30 for a $16 switch and Im not going to add another $14 to the price, GOODBYE NETGEAR!!!!!

We had to expand the home office and add classrooms due to Covid, wish I would have bought one for each room when they were on sale.

This is the 8 port hidden cables with USB charging. The USB charging powers my GL-iNet 750 so I can connect to a Hotel or other wifi or ethernet with my NextDNS and VPN shields and such in place. Normally I dont want to stress the wifi (or go through the connection pains or worry about security) since I have ethernet connections even for my tablets and phones. But I then need an ethernet switch. I have a slightly smaller TP Link that isnt managed, but then I still need a charger for the router. Another thing which needs power is a tilt/pan security camera that I also do ethernet. The switch powers both. The smart features arent something I need, but I find can be useful as it can do things like test the cable or show how much traffic is on each port. I can also aggregate ports or do other things like allocating bandwidth. The back tray seems to only make things larger, but it does organize the cable. Still it does two things in one package. It is also nice to have link speed + activity LEDs