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Forum Discussion
Is wired ethernet a good solution for me? Does GS308E require subscription to work?
I'm thinking to use a Netgear GS308E to hardwire an Amazon Firestick 4K Max. I read that managed Netgear switches require an annual maintenance subscription to work, even home / personal devices? Is this true?
I have a Google Fiber 1 GBps network with a Wifi network using Google hardware mixed with 2.4GHz devices and 5GHz devices. The primary devices are 1) Amazon Firestick 4K Max, often gets 200-300Mbps. 2) A Fire HD 10 Plus tablet getting a low signal, used for audio (ceiling speakers) and music. 3) Kasa Smart Plugs on 2.4 GHz.
One router at the Fiber jack is in a front closet, 1st floor. Directly above it on the second floor is an old Vizio M50-C1 Smart TV with Amazon 4K Max Firestick. In the kitchen is a (???) Wifi puck, mesh access point. The mesh wifi access point is NOT connected by hardwired ethernet. The Fire HD 10 tablet is in another closet halfway between the kitchen and the closet with the fiber jack and primary Google wifi router.
The house is wired with 20 year old CAT 5E cable. I used to have the upstairs TV room hard wired when we had old 6 MBps internet a few years ago. The ethernet cables have not been tested. I know the ethernet jack in a room nearest the Fiber Jack is not good and might need to be replaced and/or rewired.
The wifi speed on the Firestick 4K Max is acceptable but it doesn't occasionally have glitches. I thought I might get better speed by hard wiring. The GS308E is supposed to support 1GBps and the 1st floor router I would connect to the 2nd floor switch is supposed to be 1GBps. The CAT 5E network cable has not been tested for speed.
I wonder if hard wiring would help at all? Or if I should stick with Wifi? The problems seem to happen because the primary router / wifi access point is in a closet and our tablet running the audio system is in another closet.
Due to reasons I don't understand, our wifi network can sometimes give speeds of 200GBps on an iPad or iPhone or PC or the Firestick. Or it can give 25GBps.
6 Replies
You can always try it.
You don't need a subscription to make it work.but you don't need a managed one at all. any unmanaged switch should work for your purposes.
There's a small difference in price between GS308 and GS308E. Less than $10.
So you think there is no benefit to having a managed switch? It would mostly be for traffic to/from the Firestick 4K Max. And of course the point is to maybe improve the speed and stability of the connection going to the Firestick. The other traffic, internet audio to from a Denon X1800 receiver (maybe to/from a Plex server) and maybe built in apps on a Sony S6700 Bluray player would be minimal. So I could see your point that a managed switch is overkill.
managed switches are great if you're needing to separate out traffic or needing more monitoring. But most people don't. So they log in, look at it, set it up in default, and never use it again.
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