Difference between GS752TP and M4100 50 POE

Hi Darrylp

Welcome to the community!

Thank you for asking this question. Between a Standalone Smart Managed Switch like GS752TP, and a M4100 series Fully Managed Switch like M4100-50-POE (FSM7250P) or M4100-50G-POE+ (GSM7248P), differences are maily about features and QoS / Security granularity. In fact they are not designed for same requirements. Both come with fully functional and easy to use Web Interface (GUI). Only M4100's will provide industry-standard Command Line interface in addition to the Web Interface (local console, USB or serial - and remote telnet or SSH).

Both Smart and Fully Managed switches are line-rate for wire speed switching and routing. For sure we need to compare apples with apples: here GS752TP comes with 48 x 1G PoE ports (384W PoE budget and first 8 ports capable of PoE+ 802.3at), when M4100-50-POE (FSM7250P) offers 48 x 10/100 PoE ports (380W total PoE budget). In terms of speed and performance, clearly GS752TP wins since all PoE ports are Gigabit. The corresponding M4100 switch would be M4100-50G-POE+ (GSM7248P) instead, with 48 x 1G PoE+ ports (380W PoE budget and all ports capabe of PoE+ 802.3at).

Next, features differences: well, the list is long and can be very fastidious to enumerate. Instead, let me provide you with high level summary: 

1. VLAN Configuration: M4100 offers <<Access Ports / Trunk Ports with Native VLAN>> terminology in addition to <<Untagged Ports, Tagged Ports with PVID>> 802.1Q terminology; GS752TP only offers 802.1Q terminology
2. VLANs Routing: M4100 will provide built-in DHCP Server Pool, and if you have your own DHCP server M4100 will provide Layer 3 (UDP) IP helper / DHCP Relay so that your clients can get IP addresses in each of your VLANs; GS752TP will only offer standard static routing without DHCP server or relay services
3. Network Access Control: M4100 offers comprehensive 802.1x (RADIUS) authentication supporting several users per port and able to revert back to MAC Address bypass (MAB) when clients are not .1x aware; GS752TP will offer more basic 802.1x port based authentication, without time out MAB
4. QoS and Traffic Shaping: M4100 will provide advanced classifier-based implementation for L2 (MAC), L3 (IP) and L4 (UDP/TCP transport ports) inbound security and prioritization, allowing for time-based access control lists and traffic shapping per application, user, subnet or VLAN; GS752TP will not provide time-based ACLs and traffic shaping will only be available per port.
5. Port-Channel/LAG (802.3ad): M4100 offers maximum compatibility, fault tolerance and load sharing with any type of Ethernet channeling thanks to L2 / L3 / L4 selectable hashing algorithms; GS752TP will only allow for MAC address (L2) hashing which can create issues when routing is enabled on the switch (all packets are going to same VLAN gateway MAC address for instance, with only one link parsing traffic)

If none of the feature differences above will apply to you, or you see no need for any of these in future, then it means you can confidently go for most cost effective solution for a given speed / port count between Smart and Fully Managed switches. Please kindly let us know if you have any other requirements, the community will be happy to help you further!

Regards,