TP-Link

If the average British family consumes 190Gb of data per month, imagine how that translates into business data consumption. Combined with the UKs trail blazing adoption of SaaS where 41% of businesses have adopted at least one cloud service. Without a solid WLAN infrastructure you risk a glitchy G Suite, sluggish Salesforce and unstable Amazon Web Service (AWS).

Picking the right PoE

For a service as mission critical as business Wi-Fi, selecting the right switches to power the network is crucial. For many practical reasons Power over Ethernet is the most popular choice for powering wireless access points.

Professional network site survey

If you're looking for a professional second opinion on the health of your network, TP-Link offers site survey service. One of our experienced engineers will visit your business to conduct a site survey and establish its current strengths and weaknesses. The resulting, bespoke report will provide best of breed infrastructure recommendations designed to enable your business to reach its commercial goals.

To book your no-obligation site survey, contact the team now.

There are six crucial elements to consider
before selecting a switch:

PoE power budget and compatibility

Each access point requires power. Firstly, check whether your access point needs a PoE or PoE+ connection. Then assess the power budget required by each wireless AP. The power budget for each device tells you the minimum power budget required from each port on your network switch. These two pieces of information will instantly narrow your choice of switch.

When specifying switches, you need to understand the difference between PoE and PoE+ and how it affects your network.

• PoE (802.3af) is the original standard which has a maximum of 15.4W per Ethernet port which equates to 12.95W that can be delivered up to 100 meters from the switch.

• PoE+ (802.3at), almost doubles the available power budget, providing up to 30W per port, of which 25.5W can be delivered up to 100 meters from the switch.

In other words, PoE+ has a higher power budget per port and will future proof your network with the latest backwards compatible power over Ethernet standards.
Port speed

Picking switches with Gigabit ports ensures high speed data transfer between the switch and the ceiling mounted access point so your team benefits from the fastest available wireless speeds.
VLAN or Virtual LAN

Many smart switches include the L2 functionality required to create VLANs. A virtual LAN has many practical and security benefits, it enables you to logically group users based on their role in the business. For example, create a separate network for the data hungry marketing department, therefore guaranteeing plenty of bandwidth for the sales team. Alternatively, add an extra layer of security by preventing people outside the Finance and HR teams from accessing sensitive data accounting and HR applications like Oracle, Sage and QuickBooks.
Port security

Wireless security is second nature. Security for fixed location devices like access points shouldn’t be overlooked when considering your networks overall integrity. MAC Binding is one of the most efficient ways to prevent rogue devices connecting to your network; it effectively locks a specific device to a single port on your switch. In other words, if someone unplugs an access point and tries to connect a laptop, the port will shut down because the MAC address has changed so you avoid unauthorised devices on the network.
Port density

As a rule of thumb picking switches with a higher port density provides better value for money by making better use of limited space and power. For example, three 8 port switches will support up to 21 individual devices. In this scenario, at least one port on each switch is used to connect to the network and you will need 3 power outlets, one for each switch. However, a single 24 port switch will power 23 devices and require just one power outlet.
Configuration and management

There are two options for setting up and managing switches, Command-Line Interface (CLI) or General User Interface (GUI). CLI is specific to each switch manufacturer, whereas GUI is a universal web interface enabling people with a networking background to install, configure and trouble shoot the switch without any additional training.

PoE Class Switches

For more information about the TP-Link range of award winning ceiling
mounted access points and cloud controllers visit
https://www.tp-link.com/omada/

	JetStream 8-Port Gigabit Smart PoE+ Switch with 2 SFP Slots TL-SG2210P V3 Buy Now	JetStream 28-Port Gigabit L2 Managed Switch with 24-Port PoE+ TL-SG3428MP	JetStream 28-Port Gigabit Smart PoE+ Switch with 4 SFP Slots TL-SG2428P Buy Now
PoE Ports	8 PoE+ 10/100/1000 Mbps RJ45 ports	24 PoE+ 10/100/1000 Mbps RJ45 ports	24 PoE+ 10/100/1000 Mbps RJ45 ports
Gigabit SFP Ports	2	4	4
Power Budget per port	30W	30W	30W
Total power budget	58W	384W	250W
L2 & L2+ Features	IGMP Snooping V1/V2/V3 802.3ad LACP (Up to 6 aggregation groups, containing 4 ports per group) Spanning Tree STP/RSTP/MSTP Loop back detection	Link Aggregation Spanning Tree Protocol Loopback Detection Mirroring	IGMP Snooping V1/V2/V3 802.3ad LACP (Up to 8 aggregation groups, containing 8 ports per group) Spanning Tree STP/RSTP/MSTP Loop back detection
Security	SSH v1/v2 SSL v2/v3/TLSv1 Port Security Broadcast/Multicast/Unknown unicast Storm Control 802.1x and Radius Authentication IP-Mac-Port-VID Binding ARP Inspection DHCP Snooping DoS Defend	IP-MAC-Port Binding IPv6-MAC-Port Binding DoS Defend Static/Dynamic Port Security Broadcast/Multicast/Unicast Storm Control IP/Port/MAC based access control 802.1X Port Isolation	SSH v1/v2 SSL v3/TLSv1.2 Port Security Broadcast/Multicast/Unknown unicast Storm Control 802.1x and Radius Authentication IP-MAC-Port Binding ARP Inspection DHCP Snooping DoS Defend
Quality of service	Support 802.1p CoS/DSCP priority Support 8 priority queues Queue scheduling: SP, WRR, SP+WRR Port/Flow- based Rate Limiting Voice VLAN	8 priority queues 802.1p CoS/DSCP priority Queue scheduling Bandwidth Control	Support 802.1p CoS/DSCP priority Support 8 priority queues Queue scheduling: SP, WRR, SP+WRR Port/Flow- based Rate Limiting Voice VLAN IPv6 QoS
Management Features	Web-based GUI and CLI management	Web-based GUI and CLI management	Web-based GUI and CLI management
IPV6	-IPv6 applications IPv6 neighbour discovery (ND) DHCPv6 Client MLD snooping	Dual IPv4/IPv6 Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) Snooping IPv6 neighbor discovery (ND)	Dual IPv4/IPv6 Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) Snooping IPv6 neighbor discovery (ND)