Netgear ProSafe 48-Port Gigabit Smart Switch (GS748TNA)

we were having some networking issues with a old cisco catalyst switch with our voip phones. after replacing everything i could think of i replaced the switch with this one and gained an extra 24 portssetup was super easythe only cons to think of are1) the menu system is sometimes wacky and you miss items becuase they are under sub sub menus2) to update the firmware you have to install on your local machine the netgear managment software that uses adobe flash and kinda sucks (im not sure why there isnt (like on all other routers) a menu to just upload the latest firmware3) you have to make an account to download the latest firmware ........why do i need to prove i own the router to download firmware? why want your firmware if i didnt have the switch?

We has some problems from day one and Netgear would not replace it. It failed in six months and they replaced it. Not very happy with this switch or Netgear support proceedures.

One thing to watch out for on these switches - Amazon seems to have stock of several older versions (firmware). Make sure to download and update to 3.03 (current) or you'll be wondering if you even got the right switch.Be sure, also, to set the IP address on these switches *before* you plug in workstations/printers/etc.. I was in too much of a hurry and was tearing my hair out wondering why clients were randomly dropping.If I had bothered to read the docs (again, too much attention paid to getting it done quick) I would have seen that the switches had the same IP address and the problems I was encountering had a logical reason - wouldn't have had to diagnose cabling/termination/etc. wasting time.For what it's worth, the VLAN/trunking features are nice additions and I typically don't have clients where this is useful, I've found it useful at my most recent job where I have about a half dozen IP cameras. VLANing those keeps the available throughput to my client's network segmented and not stomped on. We'll see if the VLAN actually works well in the following weeks/days. I'm a bit suspicious that a switched priced at this level would actually work as advertised with the VLAN feature. Hopefully I'll be impressed.But anyhow, so far so good. There is a noted improvement in throughput over the old network (100 Full duplex) with the new gigabit cabling and switches.The switches were easy to set up and didn't have features that were confusing to set up. Simple. No IOS to program, all web based and stable.

Let me re-cap my 3 minutes of experience with switch.I ordered one of these last week and attempted to install it today. I un-boxed it, admired it briefly, patted myself on the back for getting such a great deal, set it on my desk, and plugged it in. At that point, I was greeted by the roar of the twin fans on the side of the switch. This switch is every bit as loud as some of my full tower servers are upon start-up.While reading the instructions for configuring the switch I saw that you need to install some software on a PC. I rolled my eyes, and I got that started.After a couple minutes, the switch made a loud pop and went dead.The Good:Had it worked, it would have been a nice looking, inexpensive 48 port gigabit switch.There is no power brick. It takes a standard PC power cord.The Bad:This thing is absurdly loud. In fact one of the enclosed documents is a massive grid of the available Netgear switches and shows the decibel comparison for all of the models. This one was very high compared to those next to it. Had I not packed it up already I'd share that here. ...also worth mentioning was the mean time to failure numbers in that grid. If I recall correctly, the 24 port version next to it was rated at 400k hours whereas the 48 port version was 100k hours. That kind of jumped out at me.It doesn't appear that you can just configure it with a web browser out of the box and the configuration software takes 3.25Gb of disk space. That seems insane to me.Fortunately Amazon's return service is fantastic. The switch will be on its way back tomorrow, and I'll be ordering something else. It is entirely possible that I just had a lemon and if I had ordered another of these, the next one would have worked flawlessly. I chose not to because of the noise level (louder than my server room) and the configuration utility.

I needed a 48 port gig switch to accompany a already growing network. This fit the price and feature point nicely. I have tied this in with a couple of Cisco 3750 metros and it hums nicely. Vlans, trunks and all features work well. GUI is a bit static - but easy to navigate.Best thing is the switch just hums (and loud) and passes the packets like it should. I recommend this highly for anyone looking to upgrade from a 10/100 install to add a bit faster gig across the board.Sure its not going to give you line rate gig - but hey its cheap and it keeps the packets flowing. I recommend this highly for both tech installs and those of you that want speed, port aggregation and features enhancements above and beyond the basics.

Bought this switch to replace an old 24 Prosafe that performed admirably for over 10 years, the new switch has been running about a month now with no problems, one little glitch I found is it doesn't always like to auto negotiate port speed when I initially plugging in some devices, a quick power cycle with the device plugged in resolves it and it works from then on. Decent switch for the price.

After installing 2 of these switches as the backbone of our small office, we immediately began having latency issues as well as intermittent network outages. After several days on the phone with Netgear support, they determined it was an issue with the firmware on the switch. They sent us a beta version which fixed the issue and we have had no issues since then. It is unacceptable that a product would be shipped with such a fundamental problem.

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