Cisco SG250-08HP Smart Switch with 8 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) Ports plus 45W PoE, Limited Lifetime Protection (SG250-08HP-K9-NA)

From my recent blog post about it: This unit is super stable and reliable and I bought it because it provides the following features: [8 ports] [fanless quietness] [gigabit switching] [dot1q trunking vlans] [poe.af] and able to use [IOS] over SSH!

Let me start off to say this is an awesome little Cisco switch. I bought three of them (model SG250-08HP-K9-NA).I was initially turned off by the GUI and the CLI. The GUI seemed complicated, and the CLI was not a complete IOS. I was thinking of returning my purchases, but after watching a YouTube video on how to set up VLANs and doing a little reading on the capabilities, I gave it another go.About the hardware: It’s build solid. The case seems to be all metal and is heavy. Roughly the same height & width of other small 8-port switches, but has an extra inch or so of depth. Typical Cisco-included USB port on the front for firmware upgrades. There’s no serial console port but it’s not really needed. The switch is fanless with front-to-back honeycomb vent holes on both sides for passive cooling. I have one of these switches inside a closed hallway cabinet and its web dashboard temperature status is well into the green.About the GUI: I think I read somewhere there were over 100 pages in the menus. By comparison, another smart switch I bought here on Amazon has about 8 pages. There's a lot of features you have access to: interface stats, VLANs, SNMP, external sysloging, individual logins, etc, etc, etc. This is really a small-business switch. The GUI very fast. It did take some getting used to finding things, but after watching YouTube and taking a lot of notes as I changed things, I’m a lot more comfortable with it. Every switch has a learning curve and I’m glad I stuck with it.About the CLI: When I first turned the SSH Service on, the switch had a very clean config (not much changed at the GUI). Doing a “show run” command gave a very short output (as compared to a regular IOS-based switch). But...after I customized the switch(es) on the GUI, I found that a “show run” had a bit more information (appparently the CLI doesn’t hides default info). There are many commands (like “show interface status”, “show cdp nei”, “show lldp nei”, “show log”, “conf t”, “copy run start”) that do work. Not enough for practicing for a CCNA certification, but enough to do some quick configuration or checking. I’ve found the GUI to be fast now that I’ve gotten used to it so I’m not bothering with the CLI.Summary: This is a very capable home/small business switch. Compact, fanless (no noise), POE+. It’s biggest downside is that it’s twice the cost of the cheapie managed switch I first purchased. But...you absolutely do get what you pay for. You want a solid home switch with all the bells and whistles, then this is it.

This switch is replacing a 10+ years old Linksys switch with a similar hardware config (8 + 2 ports, PoE, wall mounted using the same screws as the previous switch) but the similarities stop there: I was so used to the fan noise coming from the old switch that now I need to turn around to see if the switch is actually up as it has no fan and makes absolutely zero noise. I haven't noticed that most devices in my network are GbE capable as the old switch was 10/100, needless to say the response time has imprved greatly.Finally, the biggest difference comes from the software capabilities, there's a lot of value packed in there: the web browser supports SSL or plain http connections (if you want to avoid an invalid certificate warning), the GUI is pretty easy and efficiente but I guess CLI users should feel at home as well. The included Smart Netowrk Admin utility doesn't require any installation and is very usefull. I hope this switch will last at least another 7-10 years.

I needed a way to run multiple VLAN's from the house out to my workshop over a single CAT6. This does great at that and the POE is running a Ubiquiti WIFI AP and some video surveillance gear. It's doing everything I needed it to do just fine.

I've been running this switch for 2 weeks; no crashes. I'm currently using this POE switch to drive a single POE wifi access point, but will expand before long. The switch provides a reasonably easy to understand GUI as well as the solid Cisco CLI via SSH. Configuring POE and tagged vlans was easy and didn't take long. The external power supply means this switch can be powered via DC.5/5 would purchase again.