NETGEAR GS105 in a 10-inch rack

The NETGEAR GS105 is a five-port Gigabit desktop switch with nothing to configure: unmanaged, fanless and rated at 2.7 W maximum. In a 10-inch rack it does one job, adding four ports to whatever the router provides, and it has two community mounts to do it from.

At a glance

The figures come from NETGEAR’s GS105 v5 specifications. The catalogue model does not identify its hardware revision, so treat older units as close relatives rather than exact matches.

Where it fits in a mini rack

The GS105 earns its unit in small racks with a short device list: an uplink to the router, a NAS, a couple of single-board computers and a KVM. It needs no setup, so it is a good choice for a rack you build once and then leave alone, or for a second rack that hangs off a main switch somewhere else.

Fanless cooling and a 2.7 W ceiling make it a non-event for noise and power. Jumbo frames of up to 9K packet size are supported, which matters only if you have tuned the rest of the network for them.

What it is not: anything you can configure. There is no management, so VLANs and traffic separation have to happen on the router or a managed switch upstream. There is no PoE output, and every port is Gigabit. A cluster of more than four machines will need a bigger switch.

How it fits a 10-inch rack

The GS105 is a small, shallow box, so every placement in the catalogue works in every RackMate frame. The configurator shows the options:

Two dedicated community mounts hold it in 1U:

• NETGEAR GS105 mount, 106 mm deep, made for this switch.
• NETGEAR GS105E-style mount, 105 mm deep, designed around the GS105E and listed in the catalogue as fitting the GS105.

Both fit from the 200 mm deep T0 and T1 to the 260 mm frames, with nothing blocked. Without a mount, the 10i hex shelf takes the switch flat in 1U or upright in 3U, at 154 mm deep. Flat on the shelf is the practical fallback; upright spends three units on a five-port switch.

Power

NETGEAR rates the GS105 at 2.7 W maximum. No idle figure is published, and the catalogue’s low figure is left unknown rather than guessed. Plan with the 2.7 W maximum, which is a ceiling, not a typical number. The 12 V DC / 0.5 A on the external adapter is a supply rating, not a measured draw.

The switch is rated to 50 °C but its adapter only to 40 °C. If the adapter sits inside the rack, keep it out of the warm air behind a mini PC.

For rack power planning the switch itself is a rounding error. The adapter is the real cost: one more outlet on the strip behind the rack.

Networking and cabling

All five Gigabit RJ45 ports face the front and none face the rear, which keeps the cabling plan short:

• Patch a switch port to a front-facing port on a device in the same rack with a short front cable.
• For a device whose Ethernet port faces the rear, patch the switch to a front keystone and connect the device’s rear port to the rear of that keystone.
• Never route a cable around the outside of the rack to reach the switch.

The spec sheet lists a 2K-entry MAC table, far more than a mini rack can fill.

How it differs from the NETGEAR GS305 v3

The GS305 v3 is NETGEAR’s other five-port unmanaged switch in the catalogue. Both have 5 × Gigabit RJ45, 10 Gbps of switching capacity and fanless cooling, so the choice comes down to details:

• Power supply. The GS305 v3 runs from a 5 V DC / 0.7 A adapter and is rated at 2.15 W maximum and 0.31 W standby, against the GS105’s 12 V DC / 0.5 A and 2.7 W maximum.
• Temperature. The GS305 v3 is rated 0 to 40 °C; the GS105 to 50 °C.
• Jumbo frames. The GS305 v3 lists 9,216 bytes; the GS105 lists up to 9K packet size.
• Size. The GS305 v3 lists 94 × 101 × 29 mm and 0.25 kg, against 94 × 100 × 27 mm and 0.26 kg here.
• Mounts. The GS305 v3 has one dedicated mount at 106 mm deep; the GS105 has two.

Printed mounts are cut for one body. Pick the mount the catalogue lists for your exact model rather than the one that looks closest.

Full specifications

Plan it

Open the NETGEAR GS105 in the catalogue to place it with either mount or on the hex shelf. No community build uses it yet, so it is a blank slate for your own plan.

For the other five-port NETGEAR, read the NETGEAR GS305 v3 guide. If you need eight ports instead of five, the NETGEAR GS108 guide covers the larger unmanaged model, and the TP-Link TL-SG105E guide covers a five-port switch with Easy Smart management.