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After remodeling our house with structured wiring and CAT-6 cable, I ordered one of these back in October of 2005 and installed it shortly after that. One of the fans started going out a few months ago and I'm going to get some replacements which will probably be quieter. As others have mentioned, the fans are pretty loud, but in a corporate/IT environment its not a big deal and we like the hum of fans. :) At home, my switch is in a wiring closet and produces a light background sound that isn't obtrusive, but I wouldn't want it next to me. Otherwise, no problems. I believe units sold after May 2007 have a life-time warranty and I see new units heavily discounted at some websites.
You prob could use it as a hand warmer on those cold days. Went from a 16 port gigabit switch to the JGS524 without any problems. We had all the ports on the 16 port version (desktop non-rackmount version) used at full speed (gb) and it was HOT. Alas with the 24 port switch it had a fan which cooled it down considerably. The fan is loud but we had this unit sitting next to our office server which was 10x louder so we didn't even notice it.Installation was a breeze, just unplug all the CAT6 cables from the old unit, remove the old switch, mount the new one and plug all the cables back in.
Netgear will replace it with a rebuilt one (after you pay for S&H), which also goes bad. First thing that goes bad is the fan. I purchased this two years back, since then it has gone bad multiple times. It has a two year warranty, as soon as the two years are up, Netgear support says sorry, you have to buy a new one. It becomes noisy. Then it becomes intermittent. Can't say that I received a bad piece because multiple copies had similar problems. Not reliable.
This network switch works great but the fan is very loud. I wish there was a way to slow down the fan speed when optimal cooling isn't required. I have it installed in a media panel in a wall. I can hear the fan running in the room on the other side of the wall. I would not buy another one of these just because of the fan noise. Good luck on your puchase.
If you want to replace them, you'll need two 5V 40x10mm fans and a philips head screwdriver. However, it does have two relatively noisy fans.
Gigabit is a huge improvement over 100Mbit, and with this 24 port switch I was able to put enough network drops in each room that I didn't need desktop switches. This switch is solidly built and hasn't had any problems in the year or so it's been installed.
This switch has an internal power supply, and uses a standard IEC 320 connector (the same connector that's on most computer's power supplies). The auto-uplink feature means you don't need to worry about crossover cables, or which port you've plugged your router in to.
And since it's automatic, there's no button on the front of the switch that takes down the network.The lack of a wall wart is nice. These run all the time, and make more sound than your average desktop machine.
I replaced the fans in mine and have not had any trouble with overheating before or since, but I am not currently using all the ports on this switch.
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