My $25 managed switch was only supposed to patch a hole, but it became the backbone of my network
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A $25 TP-Link TL-SG108E 8-port managed switch bought as a quick port-expansion fix ended up becoming the backbone of a home lab network. The key feature driving this was 802.1Q VLAN support, which allowed segmenting lab traffic from trusted devices over a single Ethernet uplink. Additional features like port mirroring, IGMP snooping, QoS, link aggregation, and cable diagnostics added unexpected value at the price point. The main limitations are gigabit-only speeds (now a bottleneck as the rest of the network has moved to 2.5 GbE), no SNMP support, and a management interface locked to VLAN 1. An upgrade to a 2.5 GbE prosumer switch is on the horizon, at which point the SG108E will be demoted to a secondary role.
