Suggestions for replacement for EdgeMax line of switches?

Hardware Hub Networking
1

Hi all!

New to the forums here. I’m hoping that someone can give good advice on what to use instead of UBNTs EdgeMax series of switches. That line seems to have gone the way of the Dodo and I’m looking for similar style/type of switches.

I don’t care much for cloud management, so Unifi series is not for me, likewise Zyxels Nebula is also not what I want.

I loved the good interface the EdgeMax series had, the management possibilities. I am semi professional with network, having worked in university environment for about 28 years now (mostly with servers and storage, entry level enterprise stuff). This switch is for my home network though.

I have bad experience with HP switches (it stopped talking to a 3com switch all of a sudden, the irony since Intel bought that brand…). Tested an Aruba Instant on switch at work, but couldn’t move management to different VLAN and the support couldn’t understand the simple problem, they kept asking for what the uplink connection was connected to and network topology, but I only had my laptop connected to it, nothing else. It started working after a firmware upgrade though.

D-Link/Netgear, don’t know, to me they are a budget brand with perhaps not as good performance, but that might have been improved.

Those are my experiences. I live in Sweden, brands that available in Europe is a plus, but I might be able to order others anyway through a local store.

What I would like to have in the switch is VLAN handling, management that does not include a cloud based system or a local software (like Unifi from UBNT), have those as extras is fine, but it must not rely on them (like the Aruba Instant on has the posiblity), status of ports on a glance (like link, speed and the usual basic info), search for MAC address in the table and preferably web interface. :slight_smile: CLI as a backup (I’m lazy…).

So, do anyone have a good advice on what to buy instead of the EdgeMax line of switches?

2

Zyxel switches usually give you a very good bang for the buck and are available in Sweden, they’re also used by ISPs like Telia.

GS1920 and higher are probably what you’re looking for

3

EnGenius if they are available in you market would be something good to look at. Cloud management was optional last I remember.

4

Only have experience with their Routers so far but Mikrotik comes to mind.

I read that on many of their switch lineup one can install a full RouterOS instead of their more limited SwOS which sounds awesome in terms of features for switches in that price ballpark and with that they offer ssh/cli access .

3 Likes
5

Is there a reason you don’t want to run a separate peace of software for management? I understand it’s not really ideal if you only have one device, but the moment you have 2 it becomes useful. We have 5 uninfi devices and the church where I manage some IT stuff, and having it all in one management application is super useful.

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Because once your hardware is considered EOL or discontinued you’re at the mercy of the manufacturer?

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You can turn SSH on, and you can flash OpenWRT to them as well. Personally once a device is EOL I want to replace it anyway. Not a big fan of running unpatched networking equipment. You could also just run an older version of the control software as well though.

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I’m going to guess you’ve never tried OpenWRT on a switch before…

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That’s fair. As stated before I would just replace the switch once it reaches EOL. However I did give two other options.

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I would second Mikrotik if you don’t want a software defined network control.

1 Like
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Personally I would just go with TP-Link or Netgear.

Comparable replacements for EdgeMax would likely just be a switch chip (by Broadcom or similar) in perhaps an oversized steel case running essentially the same chip vendor’s firmware under different UI skins.

A few days ago an actual user review of CISCO Business 250/350 series popped up on my YouTube. These CISCO’s look sexy… You may check it out if a premium feel is desirable.

For a proper upgrade in 2023, a logical and future proofing step is from 1Gbps to 10Gbps. That could possibly be lots of work and quite a bit of expense. Might not be the right time considering price to drop and power efficiency to increase in the coming years.

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The switch is home use, I take?

Just Gigabit copper (RJ45) or need something “special”?

Mikrotik CRS326 would be my pick as a “one box does all”, can expand to more complex (or faster) setups later via the two SFP+ ports.

Can still have that.

https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/How_to_setup_up_RADIUS_for_use_with_MikroTik_-_By_Ramona

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One of the management option (not Unifi) makes hardware dependent on cloud and therefor internet connection. I want everything in house, within my own network.

Unifi then makess the devices dependant on a software you have to run somewhere. In a network problem case, I want to “talk” directly to the device to see the status. This give me 2 advantage, I know I can reach the device, and I can use what ever computer (or even my Samsung Tab 8) to do that since it only requires network connection some how, and a web browser.

With Unifi, I’m also depending on their software to work and it has requirements so I can only run it on a few computers or virtual machines.

I’m not fond of either restriction. Zyxel, that I wrote about, is fine. I had misinterpreted it wrong. Nebula is a choice, not a requirement. Had Unifi line had the same option, that is I could use either Unifi software or connect directly to the device, that would have been fine too. But in their case, I don’t have that option.

14

I agree. :slight_smile: And a switch that atleast have a few ports with PoE seems to be prudent to get. However I don’t have the funds to do it, and also we have currency that is unfavorable atm.

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Just gigabit, nothing else special.- Well, VLAN trunking and perhaps poor mans high speed network, link aggregation. :slight_smile:

And since I normaly work with more professional devices, I like to have a bit of control and/or possibilities with the network, not just “plug’n play”. Things like mirroring (when looking for errors in configuration) and soon, or in the case like my firewall, a traffic dump.

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I’ll try to look at Mikrotik more. I did some searches, but couldn’t find many devices here in Sweden yet. I think I saw a router, so perhaps they haven’t expanded (much) to Europe yet.

But thanks for this advice (given by others as well).

17

I have forgotten about that. Was looking at it when my wifi-router (from ASUS) didn’t get any more updates, but I bought a new one instead. Didn’t know it was possible to run this on UBNT hardware.

Thanks, I’ll look at it.

18

It’s not a great experience, get a switch that works out of the box

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I checked OpenWRT and they don’t have a finished image or installation for EdgeSwitch 24 Lite (the on I have), and a fast check on the switch it doesn’t seem to have the recommended more than 32MB of ram memory, a bit uncertain about this though, it wasn’t easy to get a number.

I might try after I get a new switch in the future. It is working great and is not directly connected to internet (a hardware FW between) so I’m not in a rush to replace it. I don’t know why UBNT killed of the line of switches, it was very good and at a good price. They also had (have?) a cloud service for it if wanted.

Oh, well, that seems to be the way things go, when you like them. :slight_smile:

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They are based in Latvia so I would think that European availability would be good