The manufacturer QNAP has launched the perfect unmanaged switch for home and office environments, where you need to transfer data at high speed, and without complicating your life with difficult configurations if you buy a managed switch. The new model is the QNAP QSW-2104-2T-R2, and is destined to be your best ally if you want to set up a Multigigabit network to transfer data very quickly, since it is capable of providing up to 10Gbps of speed both in download and upload, as long as you have a 10BASE-T Multigigabit card in your PC or if you buy an adapter for your laptop. Do you want to know all the features of this new equipment?
Unmanaged switches allow us to connect multiple devices via cable without requiring any advanced configuration. These devices are perfect for home environments where we don’t need to segment the wired network, and also for small offices where there are only employees and where VLANs aren’t required. If you need advanced configuration options, then you’ll need to purchase a managed switch, which supports VLANs, QoS, protocols like RTSP, and much more to set up a fairly complex network.
Main features
This new unmanaged switch has a total of four 2.5G Multigigabit ports and two 10GBASE-T Multigigabit ports. Thanks to these ports, we will be able to transfer data at speeds of up to 10Gbps in download and upload, perfect for connecting a high-performance NAS server with this type of connectivity, or for connecting a desktop computer with a network card compatible with these speeds, and even a laptop if we buy a 10G adapter.
If you’re looking to purchase a 10G adapter, we recommend the QNAP QNA-UC10G1T, a model that has a 10GBASE-T Multigigabit port and a USB Type-C port compatible with the USB 4 standard (only compatible with Windows and Linux), Thunderbolt 3 (only compatible with macOS), and also Thunderbolt 4 (compatible with Windows and macOS). In the following video, you can see the actual performance we achieved with our laptop that has Thunderbolt 4 and this QNAP QSW-2104-2T-R2 switch.
This switch has a switching capacity of 60 Gbps, with a total non-blocking throughput of 30 Gbps, and a MAC address table of up to 4K entries. Other very important features are that it has support for Jumbo Frames up to 12K in size, and that it has no fan for cooling. This unmanaged switch is completely silent, unlike other models where we do have a fan to cool the equipment; in this case, it does not have a fan, so it makes no noise.
The size of this device is something we must highlight, and it is truly compact, since its dimensions are only 26mm high, 160mm wide, and 110mm deep. As for its weight, it is 0.45kg, so it is also very light. It is important to keep in mind that the design of this switch is completely metallic, perfect for dissipating the heat generated by the components, since it does not have any type of fan. Regarding consumption, it requires a 12V and 1.5A power supply, so it requires a power of 18W to function properly.
Unboxing and first impressions
At RedesZone, we already have this new unmanaged switch from manufacturer QNAP, a perfect model for home and office environments where you want the highest possible speed via Ethernet network cable, but without needing to configure any parameters such as VLANs, RTSP, or others that are very common in managed switches.
