D-Link’s DES-1228 is part of the company’s lightly managed family of Web Smart Switches, offering much of the functionality of more expensive products but without the complexity.

Designed to be used either as a main backbone switch in small companies or as a cascaded solution on larger departmental networks, the DES-1228 can be used standalone or rackmounted using the brackets supplied. A single power supply is built in and there are 24 10/100Mbits/sec UTP ports at the front, with associated status LEDs arranged in a block alongside.

You also get four Gigabit Ethernet connectors for server uplinks or attachment to other switches. Two of these are UTP only, while two are feature-shared UTP and mini-GBIC connectors which, with the right adapters, enable the D-Link switch to support uplinks using fibre as well as twisted-pair cabling.

A Windows Smart Console utility is supplied to discover and monitor the D-Link switches, while for more detailed configuration a web interface is employed. Using this, you can set the port speed and other characteristics although, as they’re all self-negotiating, very little manual intervention is required.

More useful is the ability to aggregate bandwidth using port trunking, with support for up to six trunks of up to eight ports each. You can also segment the network using 802.1Q Virtual Lans (VLans), both for security and to improve throughput.

Support for 802.1x authentication is yet another option, although this requires an external Radius server to support it. Plus you get 802.1p priority tagging and a built-in security engine designed to detect and block Denial of Service and other packet-based attacks.

We found the pleasingly silent DES-1228 quick and easy to deploy, although the web interface is somewhat basic and the supporting documentation a little lacking in places. There’s also a 48-port version (the DES-1252 at £230.18 ex Vat) and another (the DES-1228P at £295.52 ex Vat) with support for Power over Ethernet.