For the past few months I have had a DGS-1008D Green Ethernet Switch connected to my home network running pretty much 24/7.
Read on to find out how I got on with this unit and what all this Green Ethernet business is all about.
Switches – like routers – are pretty uncool gadgets. A good switch is one that blinks away without any need for attention. To put it bluntly – A good switch just does its job. Of course, when dealing with computers, many would argue that hardware that just does its job
isn’t necessarily the norm.
The DGL-1008D comes packaged with little fanfare: A power adapter, a collection of screws and mounts, a CD and some warranty/quick start cards. Naturally, I skipped past the manual and quick start guides and proceeded to connect the switch to the network.
I plugged in the Ethernet cables, fired up the DGS-1008, rebooted my router and everything worked. And it kept working.
For the four plus months it has been connected, the DGS-1008 has not missed a beat. No matter how much stress I put the switch under, it got no more than warm. Rebooting the network after power outages also resulted in instant switching without any issues at all.
GREEN ETHERNET
The DGS-1008 has Dlink’s new Green Ethernet technology which helps the switch reduce power consumption by up to 80 percent. Green Ethernet is the banner used to describe a number of clever tricks the switch uses to save energy.
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The switch is able to not only detect which ports are in use – and power the rest down – but can also determine how long the cable is so that it can vary the power output accordingly.
Most switches just use the same amount of power regardless of how far the data must travel which is effective but wasteful. By using only as much power as needed, the DGS-1008 can use up to 80% less electricity than conventional switches.
Intrigued, I set up some tests to see if I could catch the DGS-1008 varying its power usage but much to my chagrin, my equipment failed to register its usage at all. Using our Jaycar mains LCD power meter, the only meaningful data I could determine was that power usage spiked to 7w on start-up then dropped to (near) zero during regular switching duties.
While I couldn’t prove the saving, the theory behind Green Ethernet is sound and in today’s age of power saving and reducing ecological footprints, the DGS-1008 helps the environment without any discernable performance cost.
In our tests, the DGS-1008D has proven to be a reliable and generally energy efficient switch.
Our rating is a very good 9/10.
The DGS-1008 is available now and can be had for as little as $50AU. For more information visit the D-Link Australia website.
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