QNAP has announced its QSW 2000 series of lite managed switches, offering a midpoint between unmanaged switches and full Layer 2 managed models, with prices starting from just £147. Designed for small-to-medium enterprises and power users, the QSW-L2110-10T and QSW-L2110-2S8T boast fast 2.5GbE and 10GbE connections for high-speed devices such as NAS and servers.
Whether you plan on upgrading your small-business or home lab networking setup, the QSW 2000 series is designed to have you covered with high-speed copper-based connections and 10GbE SFP+ fibre uplink. Starting with the QSW-L2110-10T, we find a ten-port lite managed switch equipped with eight 2.5GbE Base-T ports – compatible with existing Cat 5e or Cat 6 cabling – and two 10GbE Base-T (RJ45) ports for significantly boosted endpoint device access speeds.
This makes it an ideal candidate for existing infrastructures, allowing you to boost bandwidth and streamline management at minimal cost.
Next, we have the QSW-L2110-2S8T, a near-identical lite managed switch that also offers eight 2.5GbE LAN ports, but this time swapping the dual 10GbE copper ports for a pair of 10GbE SFP+ fibre ports, suitable for long-distance transmission or cascading switches. This makes it ideal for pairing with a high-speed NAS like the QNAP TS-432X or QNAP TBS-h574TX. It can also act as a strong backbone for fast wireless networking, eliminating bandwidth bottlenecks.
The new QSW 2000 lineup is designed to bridge the gap between basic unmanaged switches that offer little to no control over your network, and overly complex L2 switches that require extensive knowledge to operate properly. To that end, QNAP includes a user-friendly QSS web interface, which is designed to offer easy access to features such as VLAN segmentation, QoS traffic prioritisation, and aggregate bandwidth via LACP.
The series also features IGMP Snooping, which restricts multimedia and smart home multicast traffic to the devices asking for it, in order to avoid choking the switch backplane. Meanwhile, Loop Prevention protects against broadcast storms where packets go right back into the switch due to a cabling mistake, causing a network outage.
Lastly, to meet the needs of small offices and home labs, the QSW-L2110-10T and QSW-L2110-2S8T come equipped with a fanless cooling system, designed to maintain silent operation even under high loads.
The QNAP QSW-L2110-10T and QSW-L2110-2S8T are available for $179 / £213 and $129 / £147 respectively, backed by five-year warranties.
