Network : NetGear GS305E

Lesson 1 in life: If you need someone for a specific thing, don't start a fight with that person. The EU does not understand that kind of logic and therefore picked a fight with their one and only supplier of affordable energy. And now, we the people in the EU, pay 5 to 10 times as much as we used to for natural gas and electricity.
So, in order to reduce electric energy I turned off all the 'useless eaters' in my LAN and for the rest I use energy efficient alternatives. One WattYear = 9 kWh (let's just round this to 10 kWh for future expansion and ease of calculation) so 1 Wyr costs roughly EUR 4 at the moment (july 2023, in weffistan [aka holland]). So a switch consuming a mere 2.5 Watts costs EUR 10 per year. Last winter the prices were 5 times as high so a Wyr cost EUR 50 then....).

I turned off the Epson XP960 photo printer. I removed one AP (Helium), took out the central power supply and found a neat little ethernet switch that ought to be super efficient... Ought to be.

For some reason my attention was drawn by a NetGear product: the NetGear GS305E 5 port gigabit switch. And that switch was managed for roughly EUR 20. And it used IEEE 803az energy saving protocols on the ports that were connected to device that were not powered. Wow. I went through all the tables and pdf leaflets on the netgear website. This was a good replacement for my trusty old Longshine LCS 883R switch that served me so well.

So I ordered this switch directly from the manufacturer (first mistake: never ever buy right at the source...) and it arrived within 36 hours. The box was big. In it were

the product
a power supply (with the thinnest 12V wire I ever saw [apart from the power leads on a LEGO technic motor])
a set of completely useless 'instruction manuals' in 5 languages
a bag with two screws

Why these companies keep on supplying screws beats me. I always need other sizes and the supplied screws end up in the metal waste bin. I mounted the switch on the back of a drawer closet and powered it up by inserting the power supply in a switched mains outlet.

The power supply is 12V and 1 Ampere. I hope that it does not consume half the rating (6 Watt) since that would cost me a fortune on electrity.

A managed 5 port switch. That must be very special. Before, a managed 8 port switch was already considered overkill, so what would a 5 port bring? Spoiler: nothing. It is essentially a useless feature in a home LAN.
Look up the assigned IP address in the router (the switch has a DHCP client active) and log on. After having to change the password you enter the management section. You can alter a lot of things, but not the energy efficiency modes... They turn out to be absent in ths switch. There is, however, loop detection. Wow, I missed that in the previous 20 years...

I went through the menus and found out that the firmware was rather flimsy. If you change the user interface language once too often the switch freezes. Power cycle to get it free again. Also when you enter that firmware update function, without a firmware file at hand you need to cycle the power.

This switch did not cost a fortune, yet it costs twice as much as a comparable TP Link LS 1005 switch that lacks the (useless) management functions but that comes with rather aggressive power savings consuming a maximum of 2 Watts. I consider this a failed purchase. Never again NetGear. The main problem now was buying from the manufacturer. If I would have bought it at a giant store I would have sent it back for a refund. Another lesson learned.

10th of July 2023. Netherlands are liberated from the brutal reign of Mark, wef, Rutte. But alo the GS305 has evaporated internally. Or so it seems. I powered it up, all lights flashed and that was it. I plugged in a UTP cable from my router. And nothing worked. An AP that I connected was unreachable. The switch itself was not reachable. It didn't even appear in the DHCP lists in the router. Seems that this is a dead switch. No wonder it was so cheap. It is crap.