MokerLink 8 Port PoE+ Switch – Speed and Distance Review

1. We have a user manual, pretty straight forward since this device is plug and play and no software installs are required.
2. Some hangers
3. Screws
4. Rubber feet
5. An IEC power cord, like one you use on a PC. Good to see there is no power brick.
6. And here is the switch

1. On the back, there is a grounding terminal in case you don’t have the switch plugged in and you have devices connected.
2. Next to it, the power input. Let’s plug it in.  No sound at all.    No annoying humming fan.  We’ll do a heat test in a minute to see if they sacrificed the fan for excess heat.
3. On the front, 8 ports which support powering PoE devices up to 30w each or a total of 120w across all 8. These are 10/100 Mbps ports which is plenty of bandwidth for a 10MP security camera recording at 30fps.  A practical example would be for me to use this switch in my basement where I don’t have enough open network ports.  This switch would give me 8 ports where I would plug in my TV, xBox, access point and 3 security cameras.
4. 2 gigabit uplink ports. Use these ports to connect other switches, your modem or router.
5. Next, we have an SFP port. It’s also an uplink port used to connect the switch to your network using fiberoptics which is faster and can go longer distances than standard network/cat 5, 6 or 7 cables. Not something I’d use in my house but great for connecting this switch to another network device over a long distance like in a warehouse or if other switches in my networking closet used fiber.
6. Now we have this slider with default and extend. This is a very cool feature.
   1. Default mode is where all ports can communicate with each other at top speeds. My surface pro plugged into port 1 can communicate with the PoE cameras plugged into ports 2 and 3 as well as any devices connected to an uplink port.  The uplink ports can see everything plugged into the PoE link ports.
   2. When I change the mode to extend, we now have what is called vlan port isolation across the main PoE ports. Devices plugged into the PoE link ports cannot see each other.  If I try to ping devices in here, I get no response.  The uplink ports are unrestricted and can see and be been seen by all the 8 main ports.  Extend mode also introduces a speed drop to 10Mbps but it bumps up the maximum cable length for the ports from 100m (328ft) to 250m (820ft).  That more than double and sounds too good to be true.

My first set of tests will be between my PC and my surface pro through the switch.  Let’s start off with a 10m or 33ft Cat6 cable, and plug that into any of the switch’s main ports and connect it to my surface.  Default mode is active and from the surface, my ping is 1ms and I am able to hit 74.56 Mbps down and almost 90 up.  Remember the max here is 100.  If I pop the switch over to extend mode, my speeds are 9.3 and 9.44.  Max speed in extend is 10.  [Default] If I now connect the PC to the gigabit uplink port, my ping is <1ms but the speeds are much higher.  417 and 561.  Perfect!

Here are the cable lengths I tested.  From the surface to PC, for default mode, here are the results using the standard ports.  I had a nice connection and I surpassed the 100m or 328ft maximum supported length by far.  In fact, I was able to keep good speeds until more than double that.  Once I hit a cable length of 250m or 820ft, the up and download speeds dropped to within 10 Mbps.  Then once I hit just over 1000ft, I couldn’t make a connection.

For extend mode between the 2 computers, I was able to reach a little further by 100ft.  Once I hit just over 1180ft or 360m, my connection was unstable.  Awesome performance just the same considering the advertised extend distance is 250m or 820ft for this mode.

When using an uplink port between the 2 PCs, the up and down speeds are much faster until I hit the 200m or 656ft cable length, where my up and down Mbps speeds went below 100.  When I reached 250m or 820ft, my speeds dropped to within 10.  I was able to keep a connection right up to 360m or 1180ft.  Very impressive!

With the same cable lengths in default mode, let’s add some PoE and test security camera frame rates, bitrates and lag.  Using the 33ft cable, we’ll start off with a standard 3-megapixel, 7-watt camera.  Almost 25fps and that’s the highest we’ll see for this camera.  The bitrate is just below the max point around 300 kilobytes per second.  Great!  There is about a second lag, which is a good baseline.  Let’s do the same in extend mode.  Pretty much the same results.  When testing remaining cable lengths, in default mode, this dome camera kept strong speeds surpassing the expected 100m or 328ft mark all the way up to the 250m or 820ft.  After that, I still had a connection but the video was very choppy.  When I switched the camera over to extend mode, I was able to go much further.  The extend feature definitely made a difference and I was able to send data and power the camera all the way up to 335m or 1100ft with less than a second of lag.  Again, beyond the advertised 250m or 820ft.  Incredible!  Way beyond what I expected.

Standard 802.3af Dome Security Camera Distance and Speed Results

With an 802.3at, higher MP, higher wattage camera, the results in default mode are 25 fps with a bit rate of 653 kilobytes.  There is a 2 second lag, which is still pretty normal.  In extend mode, the results are similar.  In default mode the network connection began to suffer after 229m or 750ft.  When I switched over to the extend mode, again, I was able to push the power and data through the network cable for 360m or 1180ft.  What a cool feature.

High Powered 802.3at Dome Security Camera Distance and Speed Results