Netgear ProSafe GS752TPP review

Netgear's ProSafe GS752TPP is designed for SMEs that want more power to their network. The growth of wireless networks, VoIP and IP surveillance (not to mention IoT devices and smart PoE lighting) means legacy PoE switches are fast running out of steam.

Stepping up to the top of Netgear's Smart Managed Pro switch family, the GS752TPP provides 48 copper Gigabit ports and its generous 760W power budget means it can feed 15.4W of PoE to them all. Furthermore, it has enough headroom to support a large number of PoE+ devices such as high-power Wave 2 wireless APs and HD IP cameras.

Along with the 48 copper ports, the switch also has four Gigabit SFP ports. Aimed at providing fault tolerant uplinks over fibre to the network backbone, these are dedicated ports and can be used alongside the copper ports.

The GS752TPP is a Layer 2 switch with basic Layer 3 routing capabilities. Called 'Layer 3 Lite', it supports static IPv4 and IPv6 routing, inter-VLAN local routing and ARP (address resolution protocol) but not the dynamic routing found in more costly full Layer 3 switches.

Installation is as plug and play as it gets and you have two management options. The free SmartControlCenter utility discovers and manages multiple switches from one interface and provides tools to upgrade their firmware, with the ability to upload or download configuration files plus a quick access link to their web interfaces.

The switch's web console is well-designed and provides easy access to all features. It opens with a hardware overview showing the status of the three quiet cooling fans while switching to the device view page reveals a graphic of the switch with coloured port icons for their connection, speed and PoE status.

An impressive range of PoE controls is provided with a global usage threshold used to send out SNMP traps if it is exceeded. The Advanced PoE section provides a wealth of information about powered devices and usage.

We attached a range of wireless APs and IP cameras and could see their detected device class along with individual consumption in watts, milliamps and volts. Multiple timer schedules can be used to manage power to each port. These specify a start and end time period for every day or a date and time range and will turn power on or off for the ports they have been applied to.

Power controls let you decide which ports are allowed to supply power and you can set your own power limits on selected ports. One of four power priorities can be assigned to each port so if the drain reaches the switch's threshold, the ports with the lowest priority will be automatically switched off first.

The GS752TPP offers a wealth of standard switching features. Port, MAC and protocol-based VLANs are supported, the switch can create VLANs specifically for VoIP, and the Auto-VoIP feature identifies voice traffic using SIP or the OUI (organizationally unique identifier) of IP phones and automatically prioritises it.

QoS (quality of service) controls allow you to assign one of eight priorities to each port with a minimum bandwidth applied to each one. The switch supports 802.1p and can detect these fields and map the packets to the required priority queue allowing class of service (CoS) controls to be applied to similar types of traffic.

The switch offers great security as admin access can be controlled using RADIUS and TACACS+, 802.1x port authentication is supported and unauthenticated users can be passed to a guest VLAN with limited network access. It also provides DHCP snooping which blocks rogue DHCP servers and only allows clients to receive their IP addresses from authorized servers.

The GS752TPP beats the competition hands-down for value - Cisco's 48-port SG300-52MP, for example, offers Layer 2 and static routing features plus a 740W power budget but is twice the price. SMEs planning on a high-density PoE deployment that want great features and security won't find a more affordable alternative.

Verdict

The Netgear ProSafe GS752TPP beats the competition hands-down for value. SMEs planning on a high-density PoE deployment that want great features and security won’t find a more affordable alternative.

1U rack chassis;

700MHz MIPS-34Kc CPU;

128MB DDR;

32MB Flash;

48 x copper Gigabit with PoE/PoE+;

4 x Gigabit SFP;

760W power budget;

802.3af/at PoE;

104Gbps backplane capacity;

1.5MB packet buffer;

16K MAC addresses;

256 VLANs;

Internal PSU;

Netgear SmartControlCentre utility;

Web browser management;

Limited lifetime warranty