Question TP-Link - Which Hub ?

[THRobinson]

We had our cable TV upgraded the otherday, and they no longer use coax it's all ethernet cable now.

Big old house, and WiFi doesn't pass through the walls well, so, when we got the old router installed for cable and fiberoptic, I ran cat6 from the front of the house to the back into my old TP-Link router (cascading network) so it acts like a hub with WiFi. Worked great.

New router at the front is apparently better but only 3 ports not 5. So the guy had to install the new cable box on WiFi. Upstairs is fine, main floor cuts out constantly because apparently too close to the signal. 12 inches about.

Thinking easiest thing is a cheap hub.

5-Port Gigabit Desktop Switch

5-Port Gigabit Desktop Switch

www.tp-link.com

or

5-Port 10/100/1000Mbps Desktop Switch

www.tp-link.com

Which is faster and easier in terms of plug in and walk away?

When doing a side-by-side comparison, annoyingly the TPLink site doesn't have all their fields populated or consistent, so not sure which is better. One says 5 gigabit, but does that mean 5x1000mbps ports or each port is 5gb?

The black sleeker looking TL-SG1005D V1 is on sale $14.99CAD, but even reg price ($16.99CAD) is less than the TL-SG105 at $22.98CAD. The TL-SG105 looks a bit more sturdy but in the end, don't care about looks, it'll be hidden away, just want fastest, coolest, least trouble one. 😀

 

[bill001g]

Pretty much the only difference between those 2 is one has a metal case and the other a plastic case.
These small ethernet switches are pretty much all the same. Internally they likely use the same chip to do the work. This is all done in hardware using what is called asic there is no firmware.

Almost all these small switches can run all ports at 1gbit up and 1gbit down all at the same time. A 5 port switch in theory could be passing 10gbit of data through it even though there is no realistic way to really do that.

You don't hear much about any problems with pretty much any brand.