Here are two more lessons from the past year that I want to document and share:
7. Switching Capacity and Real-World Throughput
Not all switches can actually move traffic at full speed across every port at the same time. Many budget switches advertise gigabit or multi-gig ports, but quietly cut corners on the switching fabric or backplane. The result shows up during backups, large file transfers, or when multiple devices are active at once: speeds dip, latency creeps in, and performance feels inconsistent.
For example, an 8-port gigabit switch should be capable of pushing 16 Gbps of non-blocking throughput (full duplex across all ports). Some switches simply can’t do that, even though every port is technically “gigabit.”
Recommendation: Check the switch’s published switching capacity or backplane bandwidth. If it’s well below the theoretical maximum for the number of ports, expect bottlenecks under load. For NAS traffic, media servers, or busy home labs, non-blocking throughput matters more than port count alone.
8. Feature Limits, Firmware Tiers, and Licensing Surprises
“Managed” doesn’t always mean fully featured. Some switches advertise VLANs, LACP, or QoS, but limit how those features work, hide them behind firmware tiers, or require a cloud account or license to unlock basic functionality. Others support VLANs on access ports but restrict trunking or aggregation, which you may not notice until your network grows.
This is one of those mistakes that feels fine on day one and becomes frustrating a year later, when you finally need segmentation, link aggregation, or better traffic control but discover the switch can’t deliver.
Recommendation: Before buying, confirm which features are included out of the box, require no subscriptions, and what features work on which ports. If a switch depends on cloud management or licenses for core networking features, decide up front whether that fits your long-term plans.
