Netgear S8000 Switch
The world’s first QoS switch
PRICE $ 149 www.netgear.com One
of the most boring networking components we can think of is the humble switch. Designed to split a single Ethernet connection into many, they’re usually not equipped with any smarts at all other than basic traffic management, unless you’re talking about Enterprisegrade switches. The S8000 changes all that, bringing a raft of advanced features to the consumer-level.
It’s an eight port switch, so once you’ve plugged your input cable in, there’s room for seven more Ethernet devices. Netgear has gone for a very aggressive design, totally unlike the beige boxes we’re accustomed to with other switches, and mimicking some of its gamer-focused router designs. It’s rather heavy as well, with the entire chassis built from metal instead of the plastic usually used.
Before we delve into the features, we should probably explain what Quality of Service (QoS) actually means. It basically takes the traffic going to all of the different devices and prioritises which device gets the most bandwidth based on what it’s doing – gaming usually gets #1 priority, followed by video streaming. Considering many gaming-grade routers already have QoS built-in, you may find that you don’t really need the S8000, unless you’re running more Ethernet cables than your router can handle.
Logging into the S8000’s web-based interface reveals a series of different screens that allow the user to configure it to their liking. If you want to keep things simple, plug your gaming device into port 1 and your media streaming device into port 2, and the S8000 will automatically prioritise their traffic. However, it’s possible to manually set each port’s priority. There’s also a range of preset modes, along with a bunch
Netgear has gone for a very aggressive design, mimicking some of its gamerfocused router designs
of features that most home network novices won’t have a clue about.
For example, this device supports link aggregation, which means you can link up to 4 ports together to deliver 4Gbps of bandwidth to another device, provided that device also supports Link aggregation. However, we doubt most users would know what “IGMP Snooping” or “Validate IGMPv3 IP Header” in relation to multicasting means.
We do like the diagnostics screen, which shows if you have issues with any of the ports or the cables connected to them, but overall we think Netgear could have supplied a little more help text with some of the settings to make this an easier device to use.
Considering it’s possible to buy a basic 8-port switch for around $35, the $149 price tag on the S8000 is also rather hard to swallow. However, if you have an abundance of Ethernet connected devices to your house and are having issues with your bandwidth being distributed to the wrong machines, the S8000 could be just the switch you need. BENNETT RING