TP-Link TL-SF1008P PoE Switch

The TL-SF1008P is a compact, unmanaged 10/100 switch with PoE on four of its eight ports and a 57W shared budget across those four. In a live-audio rack its job is narrow but useful: powering and connecting low-draw network devices — a Dante AVIO adapter, a wireless access point for remote control, or a tablet-facing router — without requiring a separate wall-wart for each one. At $49 and half a rack unit on a shelf, it earns its place by eliminating small power-supply clutter that would otherwise multiply across the back of the rack.

The 10/100 speed ceiling is the number that shapes every deployment decision. Fast Ethernet tops out around 94 Mbps of real throughput, which is sufficient for a handful of low-channel Dante streams or a control-only network, but it will become a bottleneck quickly if you push high channel counts or try to run a dense Dante subnet through it. The 57W PoE budget is shared across all four PoE ports, so powering multiple devices simultaneously requires attention — a typical PoE access point draws 10–15W, an AVIO adapter around 3W, leaving margin, but it adds up. The 10W idle draw climbing to 66W fully loaded is worth noting when budgeting your rack's power conditioner.

This switch belongs in a rig where the network role is simple: a dedicated control VLAN, a single wireless access point, or a small Dante island with two or three endpoints. If you're running Dante at any real scale — more than a handful of channels, multiple devices, or anything that shares a network with Waves SoundGrid or similar — step up to a gigabit managed switch. Likewise, if you need more than four PoE ports or a total PoE budget beyond 57W, you'll outgrow this immediately. But for a compact IEM rig that just needs to power an AVIO and keep a tablet on Wi-Fi, it's a sensible, low-cost solution.