Netgear's GS508T is a no-nonsense, unmanaged, Layer 2 switch with eight copper ports and is aimed primarily at backbone duties for workgroups, data centres, and server farm applications.

The ports neatly arranged along the front panel, accompanied by an LED display which shows connection status and link speed, plus activity. Installation is simply a case of powering up the switch and connecting your devices.

Each port supports auto-negotiation so it can sense the speed of the connected device and configure itself automatically for Ethernet, Fast Ethernet or Gigabit speeds.

A modest 4Mb of buffering memory is shared across all eight ports and the switch's forwarding table has enough room for 8,000 MAC addresses.

A backplane capacity of 9.6Gbps looks powerful enough for small to medium-sized networks and the performance test showed it capable of handling high volumes of traffic. Only 64-byte frames caused it any concerns with the switch exhibiting a drop in forwarding efficiency across all three traffic loads although the losses reported by the SmartBits were so small as to be negligible.

Unfortunately, the switch's performance in the latency tests was less impressive. At 50 per cent traffic loads the GS508T kept up with the best, but at the full load switching speeds fluctuated wildly between the four port pairs.

Although it is debatable whether the majority of small networks genuinely need to upgrade server connections and backbones to Gigabit speeds, it is clear the GS508T is a good candidate for the job.

Performance is good and a unit cost of £935 delivers a very low cost per Gigabit port of less than £120, making it a good choice for small companies looking for a low-cost boost to network bandwidth.

It is also worth noting that Netgear is one of a small band of companies that offer copper Gigabit network interface cards for servers and Windows workstations allowing them to supply the complete package.

Installation 4/5
Features 2/5
Build Quality 4/5
Performance 3/5
Value for money 4/5
Overall 3/5

Price £935
Web www.netgear.com

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