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Considering that this switch isn't much more expensive than an unmanaged 8 port gig switch, it's pretty hard to go wrong. Out of the box, this will perform exactly like an unmanaged switch (but see the IP address warning in cons below), so even if you don't want to learn about these features yet, you can still get up and running immediately. Physically, the switch is very solid. It is all metal, and while pretty small, it has some wight to it, so it shouldn't get pulled around by the cables attached to it. There is a really neat cable test feature included in the monitoring section of the GUI which will tell you if there is a problem with the cable connected to a particular port. For "open" (not connected) ports, it will report either the length of the cable, or point where there is a fault. I have not had a chance to see what kind of faults it can detect, though, simply because I don't want to destroy any of my cables to test it just yet. This switch supports LACP (which they call trunking). This allows multiple ports to be aggregated for redundancy and increased bandwidth. If you are considering using LACP for increased bandwidth, read up it (not in this manual, of course), as you don't really double, triple, or quadruple your point to point link speed as you might be lead to believe. There are several ways to implement load balancing on this switch, although results were mixed (see cons). Port mirroring (out of band monitoring) could be a real benefit to parents who want to snoop around at where their kid is surfing while they're locked in their room. The configuration is very simple, however to utilize this, you will need to download additional software like WireShark which is free from wireshark dot org. While I didn't test the VLAN capability, and I'm not sure why you would even be trying to use it in an environment that you are purchasing a $40 switch for, it is there, and the implementation appears to be fairly complete. The GUI is pretty straightforward, and works well.

-Whisper quite -Many Features -Web GUI or phone app to manage it -You have to know what your doing or at least read the manual.

- easy to setup - can mount on wall

Great product with upgradeable POE settings. Has 3 settings that can be adjusted for your needs when paired with a larger (same voltage) power supply.

I really like this switch. It has all the great management features you would want, the GUI makes sense, VLANs work as expected, it has POE, and it's got a great slim form factor for wall mounting and getting it out of the way. Comes with the screws necessary to wall mount as well.

Small/efficient design Flexible PoE output

The MS305 (pay attention to the model number when purchasing) is a fine addition to a home network, especially with moving moderately large amounts of data between devices (pictures, streaming, archives) internally or via the Internet.