Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Bought this switch to replace an aging 24 port 10/100 3Com switch I've had for more than ten years. It still works flawlessly, but I need a faster switch now. Upon installation, I moved all connections from the old switch to this Netgear. No Internet. Activity lights showed traffic, but DHCP from my router wouldn't hand out an IP address through this switch. I moved all the connections back to the 3Com, and everything worked fine again. I moved connections back to the Netgear one at a time, and it worked until I had connected 5 devices and then it would stop passing traffic. I tried different combinations to see if one particular device / circuit was the culprit, but I could not get consistent results. Besides - everything worked together all at the same time on the 3Com. Interestingly, if I loaded up only the odd-numbered ports on the Netgear, it would work fine for everything connected. Put everything on even numbered ports only, and no traffic after adding 3 or 4 devices. I called Netgear support to see if there was anything I could do to fix the problem, and I was on the phone from 2:12 pm until 4:30 pm, and ended up talking to 5 (five) reps who kept forwarding me to another rep because they each said that they were not in the right department to support this switch. I know spending over two hours to get to the right department for support for an unmanaged switch is ludicrous, but I wanted to see how far the Netgear rabbit hole would go before I was connected to a technician who knew anything at all. I finally got connected to someone who was in the right department, but after some troubleshooting (which I had already done myself prior to calling) it was determined that the switch was faulty. I packed up the Netgear switch, returned it, and purchased a Cisco instead. That switch works perfectly. Based on this customer service experience, I will never, ever buy another piece of Netgear equipment. Plus, after 90 days they want you to start PAYING for their time? Cisco provides a full year of complimentary tech support, not that you should need it for an unmanaged switch, but they are pros, and have provided excellent customer service any time I've ever needed it in the last twenty years. Do yourself a favor and do some web searching to find yourself a good switch from a manufacturer that actually provides good customer service if and when it's needed. Netgear has lost my business forever. Pity, since some of their gear is actually pretty good (when it works). Too bad a single faulty device ruined it. A bad device I can tolerate - nothing is perfect. But once I found out how inept Netgear's customer service is, I just can't continue to buy their equipment or recommend them to anyone.