Add Insight Support for the GS110EMX

[ijhammoUK]

As a managed switch with 10Gbe uplink ports it is rather surprising that this switch has not been added to Insight - especially when the GS110TPV3 is supported in Insight and costs half as much as the 110EMX.

the 110EMX is a very useful switch to use at the edge of small networks where remote management would be extremely useful

[schumaku]

Agree with the usability and flexibility of the GS110EMX deployment and configuration.

Answered a hundred times at least. On one hand, the GS110EMX is built like most smaller Plus switches on an unmanaged, configurable switch core, so it's by far not a managed switch. On the other hand, there are neither the CPU resources, the memory, nor the amount of Flash to dream of Netgear Insight cloud management.

Very different, the recently introduced 8-Port Multi-Gigabit (2.5G) Ethernet Ultra60 PoE++ Smart Switch MS108TUP which is built on the similar platform like the MS108EUP — 8-Port Ultra60 PoE++ Multi-Gigabit (2.5G) Ethernet Plus Switch, including the resources required for the Netgear Insight cloud management, or for the sake of it the MS108UP — 8-Port Ultra60 PoE++ Multi-Gigabit (2.5G) Ethernet Unmanaged Switch - all the are coming with different amount of resources and feature sets, and a different pricing.

[ijhammoUK]

ah great - its answered 101 times now!

So its a switch with management capabilities, but not a managed switch.  Costs twice as much as a GS110TPV3, with less 'manageability" - Netgear sure has strange set of products...  Would also be good if you could set the port speed of the 10Gb ports too. GUI allows you to chose 100M or Auto for the port speed options for ports 9 and 10. That's super handy when you are trying to connect it to a fully unmanaged switch that you want to rate limit.

From Netgear website:-  GS110EMX 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Plus Switch with 2 auto-adapt 5-speed networking ports (100M, 1G, 2.5G, 5G, 10G) support. Through an intuitive GUI it provides easy, reliable and affordable connectivity with VLAN, QoS, LAG and IGMP management capabilities.

Thanks for the links - will take a look at those, although I dont really need the PoE.

[schumaku]

 VLAN, QoS, LAG and IGMP management (in my logic more configuration) capabilities are still not making it either a Smart or a Managed Switch. None of all this can be implemented on an unmanaged switch. Management requires a fully managed core, 

The IEEE standards are making speed negotiation for copper links for 1 GbE and up mandatory - Netgear does strictly stick to the standards, even if not all vendors agree and stick to the standards.

A GS110TPv3 has (like any other 10-port GbE switch) a non-blocking switching rate of 20Gb/s, the GS110EMX does some 56Gb/s. Not just the switch has more load, also the two MultiGig/10G ports have  much higher cost on the BOM, and I have not talked about the higher power dissipation. Sure, the 110TP PoE support with a mere 55W total does also count on the price.

For the product positioning, please kindly look into https://www.netgear.com/business/wired/switches/ for more details. The Plus Switches (Easy configuration, low maintenance switches with QoS, VLANS, PoE capabilities) are clearly positioned between the Unmanaged Switches and the Smart Switches (Increased security, high-bandwidth switches for larger networks from core to edge. VLAN, PoE and ACL controls, the Smart Cloud Switches (adding Insight Managed option to the Smart Switches).

A comparable managed switch eight GbE and two 10G capable (SFP+) ports is in the range of about 1000 USD, it does support stacking, SNMP, full SSH CLI, and much more. Yes, a GS110TPv3 is dirt cheap when comparing - price pre-port pressure from the market is obvious -  as it comes with some PoE, SNMP, even Lite CLI.

PS. No, I'm not Netgear - just yet another user, deploying larger amount of Netgear switches in the field.

[ErwinL]

Hello@ijhammoUK

Did schumaku was able to answer your question? In this case could you give us feedback on the situation and accept schumaku's post as a solution to make it more visible to other users?

Thanks in advance! 🙂

Have a lovely day,
Erwin
Netgear Team

[ijhammoUK]

I guess there is a lack of understanding of managed vs unmanaged on my part.  It has a GUI and has [sic] management capabilities, but isn't managed.  ok...

Re "The IEEE standards are making speed negotiation for copper links for 1 GbE and up mandatory" Does that mean they only auto-negotiate or have to be able to? The 10Gbe ports on the EMX auto-negotiate just fine - but you cant set the speed manually which is a pain if the device you are connecting is one that only auto-negotiates.

[ErwinL]

Hello@ijhammoUK

Yes it seems the EMX 10G speed can only do auto-negotiation and does not support hard coding of port speed unfortunately. But if people like you really find this feature as an enhancement, you can always request this from the link below.

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-For-Business/idb-p/idea-exchange-for-business

Have a lovely day,
Erwin
Netgear Team

[schumaku]

@ijhammoUK "Re "The IEEE standards are making speed negotiation for copper links for 1 GbE and up mandatory" Does that mean they only auto-negotiate or have to be able to?"

Mandatory == a "must" feature according to the standards.

@ijhammoUK "The 10Gbe ports on the EMX auto-negotiate just fine - but you cant set the speed manually which is a pain if the device you are connecting is one that only auto-negotiates."

Any specific issue or just difficult to understand or dislike an industry-standard link auto-negotiation which takes place?

[ErwinL]

Hello@ijhammoUK

Is your problem resolved? In this case could you give us a feedback on the situation and accept the post as a solution to make it more visible to other users?

Thanks in advance! 🙂

Have a lovely day,
Erwin
Netgear Team

[ijhammoUK]

@schumaku the auto-negotiation is just fine - nothing to dislike or not understand there. It’s the lack of ability to set the two 10g ports manually to any of the supported speeds. 1g, 2.5g, 5g etc that was a bit of a surprise.

as @ErwinL suggested - I will suggest as a feature request

[schumaku]

This isn't a suprise - just a strictly standards compliance not permitting what you want to achieve. Appears you still don't want to understand what mandatory auto-negotiation means for link speeds faster than 1 Gb/s.

Still lost a little bit for what purpose and even more the reason why you are so desperate to fix the link rates on these MultiGig ports. A 10 GbE port will work, a device supporting max 5 Gb/s or 2.5 Gb/s will perfectly negotiate, just like a pure GbE device.

If the cable quality does not allow the negotiated link rate - fix your cabling.