QNAP has been launching home switches, for small and medium-sized companies of all types and ranges, now they have taken a step further and have presented the QSW-IM1200-8C switch, a model that is specifically oriented to industrial environments, where there are low and low high temperatures and differences in the voltage received by the equipment. Today in this article we are going to tell you all the characteristics of this new switch aimed at industrial environments, and that, in addition, it is a manageable switch with highly configurable firmware.
Main features
QNAP has been launching Multigigabit switches for a long time, and this time it was not going to be less. This QSW-IM1200-8C model has a total of 8 10G Combo ports , that is, we have 8 10GBASE-T Multigigabit ports to connect normal copper Ethernet network cables, but we also have 8 SFP + ports at 10Gbps speed, ideal for using transceivers and using fiber optics to connect different equipment. We must bear in mind that, with Combo ports, we can use one type of interface or another, but we can never use the RJ-45 connection and the SFP + connection in the same port, because one of them will not work. In addition, we have 4 dedicated 10Gbps SFP + ports .
Thanks to the 10G connectivity incorporated in this switch, we can take advantage of this model to connect a large number of equipment, whether from the QNAP manufacturer or other manufacturers. Below, you can see an infographic of all the 10G Multigigabit equipment that the manufacturer QNAP currently has:
The 10G switches have the disadvantage that they get very hot, for this reason, it is very normal to find fans in the switches to extract the hot air from their interior and keep the temperatures under control. This manageable switch is fanless , this means that it does not have a fan to cool its internal components, however, it has very advanced passive cooling and a metal casing to dissipate heat as best as possible. This switch is capable of operating from temperatures of 0ºC to temperatures of 65ºC without any problem. We must bear in mind that this type of industrial range switches are designed to be in factories, outdoors in places to manage the Internet of Things in cities, and in many other places where temperatures vary greatly.
On the front of this switch is where we will have the status LEDs of the equipment and the 12 10G ports, either Combo ports or dedicated SFP + ports. The most characteristic of this new model is that it incorporates a very advanced power supply system, being able to accept voltages from 9V to 54V, without causing any damage or restart to the equipment. In this way, in places where the voltage varies greatly, this equipment is ideal for this type of environment so “unstable”.
In addition, it incorporates a protection circuit to prevent damage to the internal power supply itself and also to the equipment components. Of course, in this rear area we have a local management RJ-45 port and also a serial port.
Regarding the firmware of this new QNAP QSW-IM1200-8C managed switch, we have all the management features of the rest of the manufacturer’s switches, specifically, we have the following options:
- VLAN: allows us to segment networks into subnets
- Link Aggregation: allows us to create an aggregation of physical links, we can have trunks at 20Gbps or more.
- RSTP: avoids loops at L2 level
- LLDP: discovery of other computers using this standard protocol.
- IGMP Snooping: allows efficient management of multicast traffic
- Access Control Lists (ACLs) – Create access control lists and allow or deny IP / MAC access.
- SNTP: allows you to check the time from a remote server.
- QoS: allows prioritizing the different equipment or ports, it also has a bandwidth limiter.
As you can see, this equipment is really interesting in environments where there is a great difference in temperatures such as factories or outdoor environments, in addition, thanks to all its 10G ports we can have the best possible performance in the professional local network. Finally, because it is a manageable switch, we can configure its firmware in detail with all the available options.
