YuanLey 8 Port Gigabit PoE Switch, 8 PoE+ Ports 1000Mbps, 120W 802.3af/at, Metal Fanless Unmanaged Plug and Play

This review is about the YuanLey 24 port L2+ managed switch, model YS2444GSM-P. I am starting the review with a short summary of the pros and cons of this switch.Pros:• Completely silent, i.e. no fans• Runs cool with my current setup, i.e. 8 PoE cameras and a few non-PoE devices• Supports IEEE802.3af (PoE, max. 15.4W) and IEEE802.3at (PoE+, max. 30W)• Shows power consumption for each PoE port• Multiple ways to configure the router incl. web portal and command line• Total of 300W gives a lot of headroom for most applications• U1 size to fit into a U1 rack• Good getting started guide• All settings are self-explanatory (if you know networking)• Good response from customer service• Very good packaging• 10 screws for ‘ears’, i.e. two spare screwsCons:• No documentation beyond the starting guide. Not even anywhere online on YuanLey’s website.I had a noisy and unmanaged 16 port PoE switch. I was looking for a switch thata) Supports PoE on all ports. Some switches only support PoE on certain portsb) Supports VLANsc) Does not have any fans, i.e. guaranteed to be silentThere are some “smart” switches that allow creating VLANs but officially VLANs belong to the network layer 2 (L2). Hence, I was looking for a L2 switch. Most L2(+) switches that have 16 or more PoE ports have fans. Hence, my above criteria limited the selection considerably. YuanLey was one of the few switches that met all of those criteria and then some.The included “User Manual” is really just a short quick guide. It’s not perfect English but still easy to understand and much better than the user guides you get from many other Chinese companies, if those other companies even include one. I scanned the user guide and included the scans in this review for reference. Unfortunately, this “User Manual” is all you get. There is no help feature built into the web portal of the switch. YuanLey also doesn’t have a downloadable manual on their well-designed but very rudimentary website. This is the only negative aspect I could find about this switch. On the positive side, if you are familiar with managed switches and networking then most of the functions will be self-explanatory. Since there is no manual to download to get a better understanding what functions the switch includes, I took screenshots of each of the 16 main menus with the submenus expanded. These screenshots are included in this review.Most people seem to buy the YuanLey switches for its PoE capability in particular for surveillance cameras. Hence, I will mostly address that part. As mentioned in the specs, the switch supports both IEEE802.3af which is PoE with a maximum power consumption of 15.4W at the switch and IEEE802.3at which is PoE+ with a maximum power consumption of 30W at the switch. Note that there will be some voltage drop and this drop depends on the Ethernet cable used and the length of the cable. So the actual voltage and wattage at the connected device will be lower. According to the standard you should get a min of 44V/13W for PoE and 50V/25.5W for PoE+. For the ports I have connected the switch reports a voltage between 51V and 52V.A big plus factor for this switch is that it supports PoE on all 24 ports. When a PoE device is connected to a port the port settings web page will show if it uses the af standard or at standard. It also lists the actual power provided for each port as well as the total wattage consumed by the switch. The table can be automatically updated every 5s, 10s or 30s. Automated updates can also be disabled which is very useful when selecting the ports one wants to edit. Otherwise when you are in the middle of selecting the ports and a refresh happens the changes are lost. In that setting for each port there is the Watch Dog functionality, i.e. if the switch detects that the attached PoE device has an issue it can automatically reboot it. By default this features is disabled. I am not quite sure how the switch detects if a device requires rebooting. I suspect it monitors if the power consumption drops and if so it reboots the device.Many people are using these PoE switches for surveillance cameras. These cameras are notorious for being hacked which means someone could be watching what is happening in your house if you happen to have indoor cameras. The first thing one should do is disabling UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) on the “router”. UPnP allows cameras (and other devices) to open a port on the router which then allows the cameras to be hacked (pretty easily). Next, based on the MAC address of each camera, the router should block any communicating to and from the outside/internet. All of this has nothing to do with the switch but a switch with the capability to add VLANs adds another layer of security. So below I will address the VLAN capability of this switch.The easiest way to create VLANs is based on ports. The router also allows doing this based on OUIs (Organizationally Unique Identifier). An OUI is the first 24 bits of a MAC address and identifies a particular vendor. The switch has a voice VLAN and surveillance VLAN. The voice VLAN has predefined vendors, i.e. 3COM, Cisco, Veritel, Pingtel, Siemens, NEC/Philips, H3C and Avaya. One can also add additional OUIs. For the surveillance VLAN there are no predefined OUIs as there are so many vendors. However, one can easily do a reverse lookup on websites like https://ouilookup.com/ and https://www.wireshark.org/tools/oui-lookup.html The switch also allows creating VLANs based on protocol and MAC addresses. In my case I just kept it simple by just dedicating port 1-16 for my cameras. This can be easily done by manually creating a VLAN and then define which ports belong to that VLAN. My remaining 8 ports stayed on VLAN 1/default. With this approach the cameras are separated from the other devices that are connected to the other 8 ports.The switch also has a lot of other options and functions. People familiar with the knowledge of this level of networking can get some idea based on the included screenshots.

Looking for a switch for my RioLink NVR System. I found this 9 port and I am very impressed. 120W of power and auto detection of the type of input you have whether PoE or Data. I also purchased a WT brand WT-SFP+-T main transfer Ethernet adapter that works great. I highly recommend this unit.

Running as expected in 2.5GB so far so good.

Read 5 star review by Book Guru on Amazon for more Information (1/17/2023). I agree with every thing he says, But I need to add more information that he did not mention.Cons 1. Document included with box is a only a quickstart guide. BUT I discovered that the MokerLink24 Port POE+ switch appears to be Identical. I was able to download from the Mokerlink website the 192 page user manual and the 492 page CLI user guides. pretty extensive documentation. And the commands I used, works on this switch. Yaunley should provide complete documentation for the products they sell.PROS * supports upto 8 LAG's (link aggregation groups)- I was able to aggregate 2 1000M switch ports to 2 1000M ports on my Zyxel NAS.- I was able to aggregate 2 Combo ports to 2 ports on my TP-Link Router.This provided better performance form my security cameras when accessing my NAS and the DVR.* The web interface is extensive- The Status system information screen is useful for a quick look at connectivity- The Port->Port Setting screen has a table that shows all of the current link status. this Helped me find and fix a Auto 10M half duplex problem with one of my devices. You can also edit the Port and add descriptons like Computer;Camera,Printer. Or you can manually enable/disable a port.- The Poe Setting->Poe Port Setting has a Port Set Table that has information and editable optionNotes * You can use the rack mounting ears to mount the switch on a wall ( as shown in the quickstart guide)Notes: * Power settings status screen shows POE usage in mW, V and mA which is very useful but, you do need to mentally convert MilliWatts to Watts, for example 11934 mW is really 11.934 watts* To set the time on the switch (important for reviewing logs) I used SNTP. You have to use your time Zone's UTC value . I use UTC-8:00 for my time zone and had to manually enter the SNTP server hostname which for me is time.nist.gov.* I had to manually enable and enter a the Default DNS server. inorder for traceroute and ping to work on the switch. Dynamic DHCP did appear to enable DNS.* There are lots of options and security settings available for Professional installation locations, yet, it will work out of the box as a plug and play device, with the caveat that you should at least login to the switch and reset the admin password.I am very impressed with the switch, It is a real Bargain at 159.99.

Look no further trust this company for quality product. After installing 4x $250 POE cameras with it I didnt have any issues for about 10 months until yesterday. With crazy lightning and thuderstorm two of my reolink cameras went offline. I went outside inspecting cameras and such but no luck, even contacted the camera warranty team for replacement thinking my cameras died. just to be sure I went into the network closet and switched ports on the dead ones and the cameras came back on. what a relief seeing that this unit protected my 1000 dollar worth cameras. Great work I have no problem replacing my switch. You guys did a great job protecting my cameras, installation work etc.. 10 Stars if I could!!