NETGEAR ProSafe GS108 - Very Unreliable (Netgear ProSafe GS108T 8-Port Gigabit Smart Switch)

Member Name: janmikel

Product:	Netgear ProSafe GS108T 8-Port Gigabit Smart Switch
Date:	23/12/08 (390 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap

Disadvantages: Unrelaible

I have two of these 8-port gigabit switch that I use in my research. I use it to connect 4 old AMD athlon servers that I use for ridiculously long simulations. The other I use to connect two powerful servers to the university LAN so I can access data from it. All computers are running in a Linux platform.

I am pretty disappointed with this product. I have two of these Netgear GS 108 Prosafe 8 Port Gigabit Switch. It was on sale at Newegg.com and I got both of them around 60 USD. Although it is cheap be cautious in buying this product because the capacitor in it is of inferior quality. If you have purchased this switch already, try to plug it in an UPS or a surge protector to protect the capacitor. I used these switch just for 3 months and both went dead and I had no choice but to purchase another gigabit switch, the D-link DGS-2208, which is much reliable than this one.

If you search the internet, you will see that this switch has a bad reputation however this capacitor issue can be fixed if you are handy. I was able to salvage mine by purchasing a capacitor in radioshack which costs around 2 USD and I soldered in lieu of the defective capacitors and I got this product working again. But still, it has four similar capacitors just waiting to die on you so that's why I keep it just as a backup. How to determine if a capacitor is defective? Just check if its bulging.

Of course their is warranty but I find it less hassle just to buy a new switches so I cannot comment on the costumer service and warranty service of Netgear.

Note:
This review is also posted in Ciao US by the same author

Summary: NETGEAR ProSafe GS108 - Very Unreliable with capacitors just wating to fail