Unifi Switch Vs. EdgeSwitch
Recently, Ubiquiti Network Switch is of prevalence for building and expanding home network. EdgeSwitch and Unifi Switch are two main switch series of the Ubiquiti Network Switch. For years, the EdgeSwitch and Unifi Switch are featured as cost-effective, robust performance, and this is why many people have special favour on them. For they both a good choice for growing networks, it is necessary to make clear their differences and decide which one to choose. In this article, we will mainly introduce the EdgeSwitch and Unifi Switch, similarities and differences as well as compatible SFP transceivers for them.
Figure1: This picture shows Unifi Switch US-8-150W
Introduction to Unifi Switch
The Unifi Switches provide 8, 16, 24, or 48 PoE Gigabit Ethernet ports to satisfy different requirement for expanding Gigabit Ethernet network and making your network cabling looks neat. They support IEEE 802.3af and IEEE 802.3at. And the operation is rather easy, you can directly connect your switch to a storage server through two SFP ports on each switch. The transmission rate can be up to 1 Gbps. For longer distance and higher bandwidth, you can use Unifi Switch with 48-port which additional added two more SFP+ port. The following picture shows a basic parameter of all the Unifi Switches models.
Information About EdgeSwitch
As same as Unifi Switch, the EdgeSwitch have the same PoE Gigabit Ethernet ports and IEEE protocols. The most distinctive feature of Edgeswitch is that offers an extensive suite of advanced Layer-2 switching features and protocols, and also provides Layer-3 routing capability. There are 6 EdgeSwitch models, the accurate ports’ number are clearly shown in the below chart. You can use ES-8-150W, ES-16-150W and ES-24-250W as well as ES-24-500W switch models to achieve 1G Ethernet network connectivity. For SFP+ transceivers, you can choose ES-48-500W, ES-48-750W to arrive 10 Gbps connection.
Similarities
Both Unifi Switch and EdgeSwitch have 8, 16, 24, or 48 PoE Gigabit Ethernet ports.
—Switch models
The two switch basically share the identical switch type (switch ports and Watts), the only difference lies in the EdgeSwitch does not have one with 8 ports for 60W.
—Protocols
The Unifi Switch and EdgeSwitch both support IEEE 802.3af and IEEE 802.3at.
—Supporting Gigabit Ethernet
They are both support 1G and 10G Ethernet connection and have both SFP and SFP+ ports.
Differences —Color The EdgeSwitch is black while the Unifi Switch is silver.
—Management
The Unifi Switch can only be managed through the UniFi controller while the EdgeSwitch can only be managed through it's CLI or web interface.
—Routing protocols
The EdgeSwitches only support static routing, and there are no routing protocols implemented while Unifi Switches don't support routing at all.
FS.COM’s Compatible SFP Module for Unifi and EdgeSwitch：
Multi-mode and singlemode SFP models are available to Unifi and Edge switch. FS.COM is a leading manufacturer and supplier of fiber optic subsystems, components and solutions. For this Unifi and Edge switch, they offer the following compatible SFP module:
1000Base-LX: SFP1G-LX-31 1310nm (SingleMode SFPs).
1000Base-SX: SFP-1G85-5M (multi-mode).
1000Base-T: SFP-GB-GE-T Module.
Conclusion
Ubiquiti Network Switch seems to be an irresistible trend for home network connectivity. Through this passage, we learned that Unifi Switch and EdgeSwitch are different in color, management and routing protocols.
