I was in the market for a gigabit switch for my home network. It had to be rackmount because I anticipate having a rackmount cabinet in the future therefore it is best to start choosing rackmount equipment now rather than having to replace everything later. One reason for buying rackmount equipment like the GS-1008 is that it is designed to be attached to the front rails only so the case will always be strong metal rather than cheap plastic.
The Zyxel Dimension GS-1008 is an 8 port unmanaged gigabit switch. Unmanaged means that it is plug an play, you will have no control over the switch and no monitoring of the switch apart from the lights on the front panel.
The above photo shows what you get : the unit, a power cord, 2 rackmount ears, 4 large rubber feet for attaching to the unit if you were to use it in desktop configuration and the manuals.
In the above photo you can see the led readout on the front of the unit. Here you will see the difference between the GS-1008 and it's big brother the GS-1016 with 16 ports. The 1000 or 100 lights are lit to show the speed, whether 100mb or 1000mb. The LNK/ACT is lit to show a device is connected and then blinks when the device is receiving or transmitting data. The GS-1008 shows in the bottom row of lights only FDX which when lit orange indicates that a port is working in full duplex mode. The GS-1016 blinks this light when the port is operating in half duplex mode and collisions are occurring, this is a good feature for diagnosing problems with the network connection. The GS-1008 does not offer this feature.
Above you can see the 8 gigabit ports. They have no lights on them, they are just basic ports.
