Recommendation for a 8 port switch

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Hey there!

I'm looking for a first managed switch for my homelab and it seems of all supported hardware I have only two choices in my region:

  1. D-Link DGS-1210-10P (F3A rev)
  2. TP-LInk TL-SG2210P

I have no experience flashing via TFTP and worrying I can brick the switch. I like TP-LInk more, but the wiki page seems very modest - I afraid that it's not very well supported. D-Link's wiki is very complex around revisions - I afraid I'll pick a wrong one. Just wanted to check with the community if there's a clear winner in terms of OpenWRT support and overall stability. And whether its worth in the first place to flash an OpenWRT to a switch.

Edit: apparently there's also Zyxel GS1900-10HP.

2

If you want easy flashing, ZyXEL is the winner; specs are better for D-Link (32 MB flash, always 128 MB RAM).

3

It is not, significantly, different than SSHing in.

You need an USB device.
They are cheap. (anyone got a link to a good/cheap one?).

Well, TFTP it is!

Almost makes me want to buy one

Why SFP on your swi...
...sorry.

4

That depends on your use case. Do you run your homelab with multiple VLANs, infrastructure as code and want one management interface for all (networking) devices? Then it makes sense.

If you run plain Ethernet, don't need to manage anything and just need more ports, then it's not worth the hassle.

5

Which model?

6

I wish I could answer that part :slight_smile: It's a hobby, I start with small things, then they explode. I started with Terramaster NAS for Jellyfin. Now it's Proxmox, TrueNAS, server rack, enterprise-grade UPS and two physical networks connected via WG, both running with OpenWRT routers.