Green vs. Non-Green Switches

As part of a recent effort to consolidate all of our backbone networking kit into a structured wiring panel, it was necessary to add a switch to the mix. Never having played with a “Green Ethernet” device (D-Link DGS-1008G) it seemed like a good idea to pick one up and find out how green it was in comparison to two other Gigabit switches (D-Link 2208/NETGEAR GS605) already in use on my network.

Looking at the numbers two things were readily apparent: first, that “Green Ethernet” is more than just marketing with the DGS-1008G showing a 70-80% advantage in power consumption, and secondly that the five port NETGEAR GS605 is a hog.

If there were a throughput difference to handicap the consumption advantage of the “Green” device this discussion would be more nuanced, but since there wasn’t any I can’t see any reason not to pick up a green device the next time you need one.