Kent posed the question whether the NetGear GS108T would solve his stuttering problem with HD and the XBOX and whether the SRW2008 I bought required any settings to be modified.

The GS108T might actually do the trick. The determining factor is said to be the size of the buffer memory in the device. The GS108T is listed as having “128kB per unit”. The GS108 I was using before lists “192kB on-chip buffering”.

Now the problem in comparing these two numbers is that the first might mean the device has a total of 1MB (8 ports x 128kB) and the second might mean a total of 192kB (Amazon lists 32kB per port, but the math there doesn’t add up with the specs (8 ports x 32kB = 256kB). I just don’t know if that’s the case, I can’t find solid info on that. But it doesn’t make sense that the cheaper non-smart model would have more memory.

As for the SRW2008, Linksys doesn’t make it easy to find the buffer memory size. I actually found it here:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/29915/51/1/9/

In the table at the end, the SRW2008 is listed as having 1MB of buffer memory. So if that means it’s a total of 1MB, then it has the same amount as the GS108T you are looking at (1024kB / 8 ports = 128kB per port). In short, I don’t have a simple answer to your question. If you do go with the GS108T, please let me know if it works.

One other thing to take into consideration with smart switches is that many of them have fans in them, often noisy. This is simply because these devices are meant for businesses and a living room. This shouldn’t be a problem with the GS108T, it’s listed with “Acoustic noise: 0dB”, so it shouldn’t have any fans.

As for configuring the Linksys SRW2008, I didn’t have to fiddle with the settings. All I did was set an IP and password for the device and left everything else at their defaults.

UPDATE: Kent bought a NetGear GS108T and it solved the stuttering he was seeing. Anyone else have switch models that have resolved the issue?