SmallNetBuilder

D-Link DGS-1216T - more

The D-Link switch has a unique feature called "Safeguard Engine". It's somewhat like McDonald's "secret sauce"—you don't know what's in it, or in this case, what it does, but it's enabled by default. D-Link provides the following description of the Safeguard Engine:

D-Link Safeguard Engine is a robust and innovative technology developed by D-Link, which will automatically throttle the impact of packet flooding into the switch's CPU. It will keep D-Link Switches better protected from being too frequently interrupted by malicious viruses or worm attacks.

The DGS-1216T also had a few other features not found on the other smart switches from Netgear and Trendnet. First, while all switches support port mirroring, the D-Link switch provides the most granular per port control of data mirrored to the target port. For each port mirrored, you can choose either transmit, receive or both. It also supports 802.1x authentication against a RADIUS server—a feature generally only found on managed switches.

The D-Link switch supports 802.1Q VLANS and 802.1P QoS. For each port, you can configure QoS to one of four priority queues. It does support broadcast storm control, but the threshold is a global setting, not per port.

Construction Details

Figure 3: DGS-1216T Interior

The DGS-1216T is based on several Marvell chips: the 98DX-BCWI gigabit processor and the 88E6218-LG01 Gateway multi port QoS switch. Of particular note is that the switch operates with only one fan, resulting in the lowest noise measurements of the three smart switches reviewed.