Zyxel 24-Port Gigabit Switch | Smart Managed | Desktop/Rackmount and Fanless | VLAN, IGMP, QoS | Lifetime Warranty [GS1900-24E]

I'm developing quite a fondness for ZyXEL. I started off by buying a ZyXEL LTE (4G) outdoor router/antenna. That worked right away, and doubled my Internet speed to over 100-120mbps. That's excellent considering my rural location (no fibre or 5G hereabouts).Only one itch to scratch: the outdoor router needs to be powered by "Power over Ethernet" (PoE), which required another mains powered device called a PoE Injector to be plugged in near my "networking cupboard". I had been thinking of replacing my old Netgear switch for a while, so it crossed my mind to find a new switch which has PoE ports built in - and the idea occurred to try ZyXEL again. The 24EP managed switch has 24 1Gbit Ethernet ports, 8 of which can power PoE devices.The only critical review of this switch says that it is "not quite plug and play", but I have to say that review is a real puzzle to me, because this literally IS just plug in the cables, switch on and it works. There is no installation procedure.However, one of the wrinkles of my particular networking setup is that I have an indoor router to provide WiFi coverage, so the Outdoor antenna needed to plug into the WAN port of that while also being connected to a PoE port on the switch: but I don't want the Antenna to participate on the LAN. This was easily catered for by creating a VLAN consisting of the necessary two ports on the switch. I am not a networking expert and had never created a VLAN before, but so far it all worked exactly as I thought it should.I have 13 out of 24 ports occupied so far, leaving plenty of room for future expansion. About half of my 13 ports are 1Gbit Ethernet, the remainder run at 100Mbit. So far the switch has operated continuously without a glitch, the cooling fan is very quiet, and the case is cool. In general I'm getting a real sense of quality that I appreciate.The switch came with a set of mounting brackets intended for a 19 inch server rack, however when rotated the same brackets worked equally well for screwing the switch to the wall beneath the router and holding it very securely there.I'd like to comment on the web interface and documentation since another reviewer from 2018 mentioned being unhappy with both. All I can say is that here in 2023 those problems seem to have been fixed, at least on the 24 port switch. The web interface is admittedly rather complex - it's a feature rich managed switch so no way around that - but understandable if you take your time. The PDF documentation (available online) is the best I've seen in a long time. It explains what each feature is for an how to use it, all in good, clear jargon free English.So far I'm very pleased with this switch.

I bought this switch for 802.1Q VLAN support and I was (eventually) not disappointed - for the price it is only a bit more expensive than the similar TP-Link and Realtek offerings, but doesn't have many of the short comings that both suffer from (notably no HTTPS, cant change management port vlan).Some bad points;The web GUI is pretty terrible, the documentation is also terrible (often incomplete and in bad broken english), there are also not much in the way on online guides video or otherwise specific to this product. There is a video series by the manufacturer but its subtitled and not spoken also in terrible english. Additionally with my unit it was running firmware from 2016 and quite noticeably much of the GUI text was white on a white background (so couldn't be read without highlighting with the mouse) - this prompted me to look for firmware upgrades, and a brand new (but nearly just as terrible) GUI was released in the latest firmware dated in early 2018 - which made the whole experience bearable even though the gui still looked like something out of the netscape navigator era.On the plus side the iGUI is designed around many concepts and workflows as found on Cisco switches, the VLAN configuration will be fairly obvious if you are familiar with configuring cisco switches, and it has concepts such as running-config and startup-config. With this brings a enterprise like feel (which if you work with enterprise often means difficult but flexible), For the VLANs for example you can set the PVID separately from the Tagged, Untagged or Excluded status - something that some consumer managed switches avoid due to its complexity. But as I say this brings flexibility.Seemingly the product supports a good array of some advanced features not included on other brands, such as port spanning/mirroring, loop detection, port security, spanning trees, Dynamic VLANs, a few QoS features and more.I've only had it a day and a half so far - if it breaks or becomes unreliable then I'll come back and update this review.At time of writing there was only one other review which harshly critiqued the returns/warranty policy with one star, didn't detail the problem he had with the switch, but linked an image of an email where the company was asking for the broken device to be returned as they had already sent out a replacement - he seemed to be unhappy to pay postage (fair enough) but all in all this product isn't really enterprise and sending out a replacement before receiving the original is rare in the consumer world these days.

The 24 port fanless switch has been perfect for my needs. Since setting it up 4 months ago, it has maintained 100% uptime and has caused no issues on my network whatsoever. A nice bonus over some other 24+ port managed switches is that it's completely fanless, so no added noise and no mechanical parts to maintain. Under normal use it only gets slightly warm to the touch.While the web-based management GUI certainly isn't the flashiest out there, it gets the job done and contains the main options that most users will be looking for at this price point. There's also a basic command-line interface available over telnet.For those who "get" networking - or want to learn - there are a decent number of options for QoS, VLANs, link aggregation etc, along with a reasonable status page. Note that the status page is the only way to check the connection speeds; the physical LEDs on the switch give no indication of speed.Overall, this is a perfect switch for advanced home networks & home labs. You can pay much more and get the proper "enterprise" features from some of the big name brands - but unless you have a specific need for those extra features, this switch is probably going to deliver better value for your money.