Cisco SG110D-08 8-Port Switch

The SG110D-08 is Cisco's unmanaged eight-port gigabit switch — the network hub that ties your IEM rack together when you need a laptop, a wireless system, a personal mixer hub, and a stage box all talking to each other over Cat5. It lives in the same category as a dozen cheap plastic switches you'd find at any big-box store, but the metal chassis and Cisco manufacturing standards push it meaningfully above that tier. At $49, it's not trying to be a managed network appliance — it's trying to be the reliable, invisible backbone that never causes a problem at midnight in a loading dock.

All eight ports run gigabit, which matters when you're pushing Dante or AVB streams alongside show-control traffic. The 4-watt typical draw (6-watt max) means it barely registers on your power budget, and the 300-gram weight won't shift your rack's balance. What this switch is not: it has no VLANs, no QoS prioritization, no port mirroring — none of the managed features that a serious Dante network with heavy channel counts might require to isolate audio traffic from control traffic. It also requires a rack shelf to mount; it does not have its own rack ears. The 100mm depth is shallow enough to sit cleanly on almost any half-rack shelf.

Pick this switch if your network needs are straightforward — a handful of devices, moderate Dante channel counts, or a corporate gig where the venue IT team will feel better seeing a Cisco logo than a no-name white box. Pass on it if you're running high-density Dante with multiple domains, or if you need to enforce network segmentation between audio and control data — in that case, step up to a managed switch with QoS configuration. For a clean, uncomplicated IEM rig where network reliability matters more than network configurability, this earns its half-rack shelf space without argument.