GS1200-8 - Brilliant! But can ZyXEL make it perfect?

Hey there @Zyxel_Nami

Here are some examples of people asking for trunking for this switch:

• https://www.amazon.it/gp/customer-reviews/R2EWRAEHK11JF5/ref%3Dcm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B0798PKGFQ
• https://community.zyxel.com/en/discussion/8003/trunking-port-on-gs1200-5-gs1200-8

Trunking is a really important feature on any 802.1Q switch, even for the home and SOHO user who would have the need to use VLANs in the first place. Having to configure each incoming VLAN increases the complexity of an implementation further due to the requirement of specifically defining all VLANs incoming and outgoing to a port, whereas setting a port to Trunk for something like an incoming uplink from other equipment or an outgoing downlink to something like an Access Point means no complication of configuration is required for every known VLAN. A really good example of a situation at home where these VLANs might exist is for a personal network, a guest network for visitors and an isolated network for things like IoT and cameras.

Your product page very much shows a mixture of both home and business applications (and business office and workshop environments in the pictures) for this switch, so there is a good argument that it is indeed marketed towards businesses: https://www.zyxel.com/global/en/products/switch/5-port-8-port-web-managed-gigabit-switch-gs1200-series

I do not plan to raise this request again after this as sadly ZyXEL's opinion on this seems clear and impossible to change, but I really do hope that the plans are at least discussed and reconsidered before being dropped entirely. It would be a good final feature for this series and is an odd limitation given the other available features. The 1900 series is much bigger in terms of footprint compared to the 1200 series making it unsuitable for smaller spaces where the 1200 would work well, such as in my home environment where I would like it tucked away behind some monitors.

Thanks

Hi @Zyxel_Nami,

The models I have tested are:

TP Link TL-SG105E (limited functionality)

TP Link TL-SG108E (limited functionality)

Netgear SG308E (dynamic based rather than static)

These aren't great either, and a better implementation would of course be explicitly setting a port to Trunk, but it is better than nothing