Announced last year, the QNAP QSW-308-1C is a 3-port 10G SFP+ and 8-port Gigabit Unmanaged Switch. This little switch is an entry-level way for small businesses and even homes to add high-speed networking. The switch supports up to five speeds (10G / 5G / 2.5G / 1G / 100M). As we stated in our How To: Affordable 10Gb Ethernet article, the QNAP QSW-308-1C is a sub-$200 way of adding 10GbE connectivity.
Announced last year, the QNAP QSW-308-1C is a 3-port 10G SFP+ and 8-port Gigabit Unmanaged Switch. This little switch is an entry-level way for small businesses and even homes to add high-speed networking. The switch supports up to five speeds (10G / 5G / 2.5G / 1G / 100M). As we stated in our How To: Affordable 10Gb Ethernet article, the QNAP QSW-308-1C is a sub-$200 way of adding 10GbE connectivity.
The little switch is compact and fanless, meaning it would be fine sitting on a desk and not causing much of an issue. The amount of ports provided can connect and speed up smaller offices and homes. The switch supports auto-negotiation for optimal speed as well as duplex detection for different devices. It comes unmanaged and these features help users rest easy knowing it needs no management. The switch can use existing cables for 10GbE and NBASE-T technologies (though the cable must be less than 45 meters and at a CAT 6e, 6A, or CAT 7).
The QNAP QSW-308-1C Unmanaged Switch comes with a two-year warranty and can be picked up for $160.
QNAP QSW-308-1C Unmanaged Switch Specifications
| Management Type | Unmanaged |
| Number of Ports | 11 |
| 10GbE SFP+ | 2 (10G only) |
| 10GbE SFP+/RJ45 Combo Ports | 1 |
| 1GbE (RJ45) | 8 |
| Power Supply Description | Adapter |
| Max. Power Consumption | 36W |
| Input Power Type | AC |
| Input Voltage Range | 100-240VAC, 50/60 Hz |
| MAC Address Table | 16K |
| Total Non-Blocking Throughput | 38Gbps |
| Switching Capacity | 76Gbps |
| Fan | Fanless |
| Supported Standards | IEEE 802.3 Ethernet IEEE 802.3u 100BASE-TX IEEE 802.3ab 1000BASE-T IEEE 802.3an 10GBASE-T IEEE 802.3bz 2.5G/5G BASE-T Multi-Gig Ethernet |
| Form Factor | Desktop |
| LED Indicators | Per Port: Speed/Link/Activity Per System: Power/Status |
| Dimensions (HxWxD) | 1.67 × 11.42 × 5 inch |
| Weight (Net) | 1.7 lbs |
| Weight (Gross) | 2.62 lbs |
| Operating Temperature | 0 – 40˚C / 32~104°F |
| Relative Humidity | 5~95% Non-condensing |
| Certifications | CE, FCC, VCCI, BSMI RCM, CCC |
| Electromagnetic Compliance | CLASS B, UL62368 |
| Jumbo Frames | 10k |
| Warranty | 2 Years |
Design and Build
The QNAP QSW-308-1C is a small little switch that can easily be moved one-handed. The overall design in white with a green power supply that swivels around for easy powering. The front of the device has 8 1GbE (RJ45) ports, 3 x 10GbE SPF+ ports, and a 2.5/5/10GbE SFP+/RJ45 combo Port. There is a power indicator LED in the bottom left corner.
The top of the switch has QNAP Branding, ventilation, and a sticker with pertinent information on it.
The rear of the device has the power connection on one side and some ventilation on the other.
QNAP QSW-308-1C Usability and Testing
Setup was as easy as plugging in power, plugging in networking and connecting devices. We ran a 10G uplink from our main switch to the QSW-308-1C. From there we did our normal NAS benchmarks (on a QNAP TS-453D with 4x Toshiba 480GB SSDs in RAID10) using both a single 1G port and a single 2.5G port to see the difference. This isn’t our full review of the QNAP TS-453D, that will be coming down the pipeline shortly.
We want to highlight a handful of the difference between the two speeds. In 4K throughput we saw read IOPS of 28,477 iSCSI with 1G and 67,979 IOPS with 2.5G.
With 4K average latency we saw similar improvements in iSCSI seeing reads go from 8.99ms with 1G to 3.76ms with 2.5G.
In 4K max latency CIFS writes latency dropped from 928ms to 359ms going from 1G to 2.5G.
8K 100% read/write throughput saw iSCSI go from 11,530 IOPS to 29,268 IOPS in write and 14,357 IOPS to 35,914 IOPS in read.
Large block sequential 128K saw jumps in both configurations in both read and write. In read CIFS and iSCSI we saw it go from 116MB/s to 289MB/s. For write CIFS went from 115MB/s to 287MB/s while iSCSI went from 106MB/s to 213MB/s.
Conclusion
The QNAP QSW-308-1C Unmanaged Switch is an easy way to add higher connectivity to a small or home office. The switch is compact and quiet and can be placed anywhere near devices that need to be connected. The switch comes with eleven ports and up to 5 speeds. It can work with CAT5e/CAT6 and SFP+ cables. QNAP sells several other adapters and expansion cards so users can hook up most of their existing equipment that is ready for higher speeds. No management is needed as the switch auto-detects speeds and negotiates what is needed. It comes right out of the box ready to work and increase networking speed.
The biggest benefit to the QNAP QSW-308-1C Unmanaged Switch is adding faster networking speeds. Particularly here is QNAP’s push to add more device with 2.5GbE connection such as their TS-453D NAS. The switch didn’t add higher performance across the board but there were several areas where we saw a jump in performance in several cases over 2x that of the 1GbE. For instance, we saw 4K throughput for read jump over 38K IOPS in iSCSI. Average latency 4K reads for iSCSI dropped over half from about 9ms to less than 4ms. And our 128K large block sequential benchmark saw speeds jump over double in both configurations and read and writes.
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