Tenda SM108 — 8-Port 2.5G Ethernet Switch

Buying it, and when not to

The SM108 is an 8-port 2.5G Ethernet switch - eight ports, every one of them capable of 2.5 gigabit.

This is the small-network core for a site that has outgrown gigabit in places. A 2.5G router, a NAS, two or three workstations that move large files, and the uplink to the rest of the building all land here, and none of them is throttled by the switch. For a production office, a studio, a surveillance installation with high-bitrate cameras writing to a recorder, or a business that has just taken a connection faster than a gigabit, this is the component that makes the upgrade real rather than theoretical.

It is wasted money on a network where nothing exceeds a gigabit, which is still most networks: a TEG1016M gives sixteen gigabit ports for less than this gives eight 2.5G ports, and the users will not know the difference. If only two or three devices need 2.5G, the five-port SM105 is cheaper. And like the rest of the SM range it carries no PoE, so a site with ceiling access points or IP cameras needs a PoE switch in the design as well - size that separately and do not assume one switch will do both jobs.