Netgear Prosafe GS724TPS 24 Port Gigabit Smart Stackable PoE Switch Review

Looking at the switch as a whole, size is pretty much set by its rack mount capability and costs 1U of rack space. The bulk of the switch is built into its depth measuring 31cm deep.

On the left hand edge of the switch we find a compact yet detailed status panel, with various LEDs to indicate alongside power, and an PoE faults, which switch is the master in a stack, stack link status and what mode the LEDs above the ports are in. Towards the bottom of the panel there are also two buttons for resetting to system and also setting it back to factory defaults.

Down towards the other end of the switch are the ports. The GS724TPS has 24 auto-negotiating Gigabit ports along with four SFP Gigabit Ethernet Fiber ports for additional connectivity.

Above each port is an LED to indicate link speed and activity or PoE status depending on the mode selected by the button by the system status panel. In PoE mode, each LED will indicate active PoE in green and a PoE fault in amber. In LAN mode, an amber LED indicates 10/100 connectivity and activity whilst green indicates Gigabit activity.

Each of the 24 ports supports PoE power delivery, for PoE devices such as access points like the WNDAP360 access point that we looked at not too long ago. Ports 1-4 support up to 30W of delivery each.

The remainder of the Ethernet ports (5-24) are each capable of delivering up to 15.4W of power. Overall the switch is able to deliver a total of 192W of power through PoE.

Moving round to the left hand side of the switch, four 40mm fans draw air though the switch to keep it cool during operation.

On the rear of the switch alongside the Kensigton Lock point and IEC power, we find two HDMI ports. As noted before these are not as display outputs, but are infact for switch stacking. HDMI as we know has a high bandwidth capability, and using the included HDMI cable, switches can be joined together with a bandwidth of 10Gbps. Up to six switches or a total of 288 ports can be linked together in a single stack and can all be managed from a single web interface.