Tenda SG108 — 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch

Buying it, and when not to

The SG108 is an 8-port gigabit Ethernet switch in a plastic body. There is nothing to configure: power it, plug in the cables, and every port runs at gigabit. That simplicity is the product.

This is the most-sold item in any installer's van for a reason. A customer's router has four ports and they need seven. A DVR, a desktop, a smart television and an access point all land in the same corner of a room. A fibre ONT hands off one Ethernet port and three devices need it. In every one of those cases an SG108 is the five-minute answer, and at one hundred to a carton the per-unit price makes it worth stocking deep rather than buying one at a time.

The plastic body is the honest limitation: it is a desktop unit for an indoor, dry, reasonably cool position, not something to bolt into a hot roof void or a dusty shop ceiling. For a rack, use the TEG1016G. For more than eight devices, the 16-port TEG1016M or TEG1016G saves you daisy-chaining switches, which is where small networks start behaving strangely. And it supplies no PoE - if the devices you are connecting are ceiling access points or IP cameras, you need a PoE switch such as the TEG1105P-4-63W instead, or you will be back with a bag of injectors.