---
title: "My $25 managed switch was only supposed to patch a hole, but it became the backbone of my network"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/my-25-managed-switch-was-only-supposed-to-patch-a-hole-but-it-became-the-backbone-of-my-network-r6wfgkxo3
source_url: https://www.xda-developers.com/my-25-dollar-managed-switch-became-the-backbone-of-my-network
type: article
source: "XDA Developers"
published: 2026-07-05T14:05:16.251Z
updated: 2026-07-05T14:05:39.793Z
tags: ["proxmox"]
reading_time: 5
upvotes: 0
comments: 0
language: en
---

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# My $25 managed switch was only supposed to patch a hole, but it became the backbone of my network

**[XDA Developers](https://daily.dev/sources/xda-developers)** · 5 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

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.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://www.xda-developers.com/my-25-dollar-managed-switch-became-the-backbone-of-my-network>

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---

Tags: [#proxmox](https://daily.dev/tags/proxmox)

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