Green Ethernet – Every Little Bit Helps

For a couple of months, I noticed some real slowdown on my internal gigabit network in my house. When I finally started investigating, I found that my old Netgear gigabit switches were to blame. They were fairly old, so I figured I would replace them. I looked around and found the D-Link DGS-2208.

There were a couple reasons I chose this switch. It was a nice 8-port switch with gigabit and jumbo frame support, and I had been really happy with my D-Link gaming router, so I was fond of the brand. But the other reason was because of D-Link’s green ethernet technology.

Basically, the technology shuts off power to ports not in use, and can dynamically allocate power on a port based on the length of the cable run. They say it can provide about a 40% power savings over standard switches. Now that may not amount to much, but if I can save SOME power, that’s a good thing in my book.

Anyway, I put two of these in my network and it perked the speeds right back up. I couldn’t be happier. Best yet, I got each one for $60 at Best Buy. If you need a switch, I would check it out.