3. Web Management

Let’s face it, a switch isn’t exactly the sexiest piece of hardware in the networking space. A managed switch, however, is a marvelous thing. The simple box has ports on it just like its unmanaged brethren, but once you open up the Web interface, you really get a taste for networking wizardry and control that you can perform.

The main interface Status Overview tab provides a snapshot of switch operations. The top of the screen gives you the “At a Glance” view of port usage in a visual rendition of the switch. The switch port layout picture is also updated in real time without the need for manual screen refreshing, which is helpful.

What’s annoying here is how the overview screen does not offer a full overview. From this main overview screen you don’t know which, if any, ports have PoE active on them (sure, you can dig deeper into PoE in a separate tab, but it still would be nice to know that it’s on or not in the overview).

Also the “Frame Type” check box is somewhat misleading. In the above picture the Frame Type is listed as “All”. The problem with that is that it’s not entirely accurate. In a separate tab (Ports) you can specify whether or not the switch will support Jumbo Frames. Regardless of whether or not the Jumbo Frames support is turned on or off for the switch, the Overview screen still displays the Frame Type as “All”.

“Statistics,” the other tab under status, offers details on individual port activity. The data on the detail page is interesting enough, but personally I think that a stats page needs to identify the time period in which the stats were captured. There should be some kind of charting for the stats and a way to export the stats to another tool for further analysis. Sure, I know you can use SNMP or even LLDP but why not make it easy and have something from within this tab?

Port Control

Essentially a switch is all about port control, but the EZ Switch breaks out only a few items specifically under the port control tab. The basic settings allow for individual port speed management as well as flow control options. Then there is something called “Storm Control,” which is different than the usual flow control in that it is specific to control broadcast and multicast across the entire switch.

Beyond control, the other side of port management on the EZ switch is diagnostics and in that area there are two interesting options: Port Mirroring and Cable Diagnostic. The Port Mirroring feature lets one port be copied on another, for diagnostic purposes. The Cable Diagnostic is particularly interesting and is a feature that could be a real life saver. Most of us have lots of Ethernet cables lying around and we just plug in what we’ve got handy. The problem is that not all cables are equal and often it’s difficult to tell cables apart. The Cable Diagnostic function reports on the cable’s length and is supposed to help identify any faults. In limited testing, the diagnostic was mostly accurate with cable length though it did have some difficulty with over reporting on length with short cable lengths of less than six feet.

The other odd thing with the cable diagnostic function is, for a very strange reason, it only works on seven of the eight Ethernet ports on the device. A quick trip though SMC’s user friendly manual revealed the following tidbit: "Note: Due to a hardware issue, Port 8 cannot display cable diagnostic information."

One of the other really neat advanced features of the switch is the ability to do Port Trunking. In a Port Trunking setup, multiple ports are combined to form a bigger aggregate connection. To configure a static trunk, it’s a simple point-and-click affair with this switch. The only problem is that beyond identifying the fact that you’ve got an active trunk, there isn’t any additional reporting on the aggregate performance of your new static trunk.

VLAN (Virtual LAN) setup is similarly easily achieved with the EZ switch, which can support up to 64 VLANs. Where SMC has really excelled though is that with each of its tabs, there is a help button that provides information about the individual items that can be configured as well as internal links to broader information about networking topics such as VLANs. The information is basic, but in most cases, it’s all you need as either a quick refresher or as a quick introduction to a topic.