Meet the D-Link DGS-1100-08PV2 switch with PoE and management

Main features

The first thing that strikes us about this D-Link DGS-1100-08PV2 switch is that it is very similar physically to the DGS-108, therefore, we are facing a very small switch, ideal to locate it in the PAU (Point of User Access) from the entrance of the house and distribute connectivity throughout our home, in addition, we could also place it on a table or directly in the office to provide connectivity to PCs, servers, IP cameras and access points among other devices that support wiring-

Gigabit ports with PoE +

This new model has a total of 8 Gigabit Ethernet ports for the LAN, supports Auto MDI / MDIX to automatically detect if the cable is flat or crossed, it also has auto negotiation to synchronize at the maximum speed of the link, supports the speeds of 10/100 / 1000Mbps, so it adapts perfectly to the speeds of network cards and network cabling.

Each and every one of the eight ports is PoE + using the 802.3at standard. Thanks to the fact that it incorporates PoE / PoE + (with the 802.3af / at standards respectively) we can power IP cameras and access points among other wired devices compatible with PoE. We have a 64W Power Budget, more than enough to power several IP cameras and access points simultaneously.

This model has a switching capacity of 16Gbps, a maximum forwarding rate of 11.9Mpps and a MAC address table of up to 4K entries. In other words, we are dealing with a switch of the mid-range of switches, but it is “Smart”, this means that we have a management web menu to configure certain protocols at L2 level.

Web-manageable firmware

This switch is manageable, it belongs to the «Smart» family of manageable switches from the manufacturer D-Link, the DGS-1100 range is the entry level in switch management, therefore, we will not have as many advanced options as in higher ranges like the popular DGS-1210, DGS-1250 or DGS-1520 among many others. However, this model has everything you need to meet the needs of “advanced” home users who require configuration options, and also for small offices that need to segment their network or apply QoS policies.

The firmware of this manageable switch will allow us to configure the following parameters:

• Configure ports: we can configure if we want the Gigabit ports enabled or not, force the synchronization speed, force the duplex, and we can even activate or deactivate the flow control of the different ports. We can also put a description to them to quickly locate what device we have connected. Finally, we can activate the support for Jumbo Frames at 9K to take full advantage of the Gigabit networks of the local network.
• PoE: this switch allows us to enable or disable PoE ports easily and quickly. We will be able to configure the disconnection policy of the PoE ports in case of exceeding the Power Budget, defining different priorities for each of the ports. We can also configure the “PD Alive” to make sure that the equipment that we connect to the PoE port is always responding, otherwise we can restart the port (turn off and on) to force them to restart and start working again.
• VLAN: we can configure several VLANs, in fact, we will have the possibility of configuring the 802.1Q VLAN Tagging standard, VLANs per port and even configuring the asymmetric D-Link VLAN. Of course, this model has video surveillance and voice VLANs, to prioritize the data that travels through these VLANs and provide the best possible user experience when having IP cameras and VoIP phones. This model also allows you to configure a management VLAN to which we can access the configuration web interface, ideal for correctly segmenting the local network.
• STP / RSTP: this switch has the Spanning-Tree Protocol and also RSTP, in order to avoid loops at the L2 link layer level, which is normal in environments where we have more than one switch in order not to have any loops or to provide redundancy in case drop of one of the nodes.
• QoS: we have the possibility to prioritize the different ports, create priority queues and even configure the bandwidth limiter per port that we also have available.
• Security: this model has Port Security functionality, traffic segmentation between different ports so that they cannot communicate with each other, and we even have broadcast / multicast / unicast storm control.

Other features of this switch is the ability to view the status of the cables, configure the Port Mirroring and also activate the energy saving functionalities.

As you can see, at the management level this switch is very complete, ideal for an «advanced» domestic environment and also for a small and medium office where we want to have everything that happens on the network under control.

Unboxing and first impressions

This D-Link DGS-1100-08PV2 switch has everything you need to be one of the best low-cost managed switches with PoE port, because the price of this model is below € 100, and it will allow us to have in our easy-to-configure web management at home and in the office. The possibility of feeding IP cameras or WiFi access points through the switch is also a very strong point, because it is capable of providing us with up to 30W per port thanks to PoE +, the Power Budget of this model is 64W, more than enough for a home or office environment.

The only handicap that we have seen is the current transformer, it is really large compared to other power supplies, this is because it is capable of providing us with up to 85W of power, to power both the manageable switch itself and the PoE devices that we connect to the.

In the following video you can see in detail the main characteristics of this switch, the contents of its box, and what the current transformer is like and also the D-Link DGS-1100-08PV2 model. You will realize that this switch is physically very similar to the popular D-Link DGS-108, a Gigabit switch without PoE and without web management, but with a really small size, ideal for placing it in the PAU at the entrance of the house.