INTRODUCTION

   For regular consumers network switches may certainly not be quite as popular as modem/routers and even repeaters but they can come equally handy in several scenarios. For example, a good friend of mine finished his new building a few months back and was looking for ways to connect 16 different Ethernet wall sockets with his modem/router and the easiest way was to use a network switch. He had also purchased 2 IP cameras which he obviously wanted to connect with that said switch so he chose to go with a PoE+ model in order to skip the extra power cables (and the additional work required for that). Personally, i use numerous PoE switches both at the office/lab and at home (4 at the time of this review to be exact) which is why I’m always looking to see if there's anything better i can replace them with. That's also why i decided to take a look at the ECS1008P Cloud Enabled 8-Port Gigabit PoE L2 Managed Switch by EnGenius.

   EnGenius Technologies is an industry expert in wireless communications and radio frequency (RF) technology. The company has been around for more than 20 years and is focused on delivering feature-rich, long-range, wireless networking solutions for voice and data that empower mobility.

   As clearly stated by its product description the ECS1008P features a total of 8 RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet ports which can deliver a total switching capacity of 16Gbps. All 8 RJ45 ports support the PoE standard (electrical power is provided via the Ethernet cable) with a maximum budget of 55W (up to 15.4W per port) making them ideal for use with PoE compatible devices like IP cameras, IP microphones, IP/VoIP telephones and of course access points. However, unlike the majority of Gigabit switches in its class what makes the ECS1008P stand out is its cloud feature which allows the end user to access its primary functions over the EnGenius Cloud service. Of course, EnGenius also packs the ECS1008P with a plethora of features and monitoring tools including 802.3ad link aggregation, 802.3az power save mode, 802.1d spanning tree, 802.1Q tagged VLAN, 802.1p Class of Service (CoS), 802.1X RADIUS authentication, Quality of service (QoS), LLDP, ACL, SNMP v1/2c/3 (simple network management protocol), RMON 1/2/3/9 (remote monitoring), Loopback Detection, MAC/port filtering, IGMP forwarding/snooping, port mirroring and Voice VLAN. So, let's see how the "entry-level" model of the ECS family does, both in terms of performance and of course features.