The main compromise in choosing this was that it offered “near silent” operation by only spinning the fans when needed, compared to other switches where fans are on permanently.

Trouble is, when the fans do spin on the GS324TP they are audibly intrusive, whether brand new or a few months in they sound like the bearings are failing with a knock that matches the RPM, deploying four of these units previously with the same harmonics suggest it’s not a one off.

This isn’t good news when I intend to work a few feet from the switch, but from testing before the latest deployment, there’s a couple of ways to keep the GS324TP near silent…

Installing out of the box with firmware 10.0.0.38, the fans cut in for approx. 5 minutes, every 10 minutes. In close quarters this can be unbearable, as either the fans are disturbing, or you’re waiting for the fans to kick in and disturb you.

There’s not a lot of conversation on this unit, as it gets lost with many Netgear units suffering from the same low-quality fans. But a useful post suggests that heat soak while the fans are off is a contributing factor in the frequency of the fans spinning up.

To counteract this, let’s get a high-quality quiet fans to get some airflow through the case alleviate the factory fans.

Replacing the factory fans could be an option but for two issues; first the warranty, second finding a suitable replacement is difficult due to the signalling pin / speed pin which when wrong results in the fan light illuminating or the new fans not spinning at all.

POE Cooling

The alternative plan is to mount a high-quality quieter fan externally to push out the heat inside the case before the factory fans get called upon.

The fan of choice is a Noctua NF-A4x20 FLX, reused from a failed attempt to fan swap a Netgear JGS516P where this replacement didn’t spin.

As it’s a POE switch, POE would be a convenient power source for the external fan. It gives a more self-contained solution and more the operation of the fan can be toggled on/off via the web GUI of the switch by controlling the power to the port.

A POE to 12V splitter was purchased to negotiate power to the fan.

Modifications

Opening up the POE splitter, it’s lucky for the output ports to be socketed and the power delivery and ethernet elements separated;

Screw located under the label…

Make a note of the polarity of the power output, then remove the power and ethernet connectors…

To connect the fan, I used a coupe of male to female jumper cables to extend the cables outside the splitter case. The connecters would have sat proud of the case, so removed the connectors and replaced with shrink tubing.

Connecting to the fan, I replaced the two single pin headers with a three-pin header in a crude attempt to key to the fan socket, bypassing the sense pin.

After testing, the Noctua NA-RC12 was added to reduce speed and increase silence.

Mounting

To mount the fan externally to the case, a 3D printed bracket holds the fan to the case opening via the rackmount screws. Positioning of the fan is towards the back of the inlet vent, after experimentation there’s no benefit in having the fan pass directly over the PSU and heatsink, so chose to route airflow round the back of the unit to create an airflow.

STL for the mount is available here.

Results

During one of the hottest weeks of the year, temperatures while the Noctua fan was on averaged 47-49 Celsius, keeping it below the 51 degrees threshold where the factory fans kick in on firmware 10.0.0.38.

For reference, ambient reached around 30 Celsius for most of the day as noted by the thermostat…

Even though the Noctua fan speed was at its minimum, it was still noticeable, if this too is a concern, recent firmware can offer a solution…

Firmware

Firmware 10.0.0.38 from the release notes purports to start the fans at a lower temperature and at a lower speed. Translated the fans start when a temperature reaches 51 Celsius, spinning at 30% / 1800rpm until temps reduce to 45 degrees.

An earlier 10.0.0.30 firmware was released seemingly to deal with trigger happy fans. With this version fans don’t start until 60 degrees, where they run at 50% duty, although above 51 degrees a warning label is shown on the GUI, but that’s all.

Switching to this, temps stay between 57 – 59 degrees when ambient is reaching 27 which for me is at the peak of summer, negating the need for the external cooling solution but it’s nice to have as a backup, and more importantly keeping it completely silent.

Update: Dec 2022

With the exception of unseasonably hot summer heatwaves, I’ve not needed to think about the cooling of the switch. With the home heated to 18 degrees Celsius in winter temps on the highest sensor is at 54C suggesting this is the range it normally operates at and without the warning on firmware 1.0.0.30.

I use a Netgear FVS318N for my wireless connections and a frustration is that the region is locked to Europe, where the radio power is limited more than other parts of the world.

This means the highest achievable power is half, raising it to full results in this dead end:

Very annoying, this post shows how to get a region locked Netgear use all the power available, and to discover what devices in the area are competing for the wireless space.

Back to my initial problem of intermittent connections. Thinking the worst, the first hunch was a nearby miscreant creating a DOS attack by using de-auth packets, but this was quickly dismissed by a quick sniff on Wireshark.

Next was to discover the wireless devices competing with my access point, for this I use Inssider 3, the last free version of the product. Simply run the program, select your wireless card and a list of all discoverable access points display, along with their signal strength.

In this example, it’s clear why the disconnects were happening, my access point was competing a lot of others, including one that was on the same channel and power level as mine. Seeing something like this would normally be a cue to experiment with moving the access point to a different location to try and improve the strength, however for many this is not possible.

Moving onto the Netgear and getting the most power from it. While the web portal blocks the power rating, the command line interface (CLI) is not so sophisticated, but is just as useful in making configuration changes.

Getting access to this involves a Telnet connection. Using Putty, select the Telnet radio box and enter the IP address of the router. The username and password is the same used for the web interface.

To navigate the menus, enter a question mark to see the options that are available. To get to the radio section, enter dot11 radio configure to get to the radio sub menu.

Then default_transmit_power Full to set the radio power. Without fuss the CLI will just accept the command and displays a new line for the next. It’s important to commit the changes but typing exit to finish with the radio sub menu.

Then to exit completely, remove the pre-typed menu location and enter .exit to quit.

To check its successful, log in the web interface once more and the full power setting is populated when visiting the radio settings.

Note: clicking apply on this page with trigger the same region error as before, therefore if changes are to be made the power must be turned back down to half or lower in order to save. To get the full power back, Telnet into the router and repeat the above steps.

Revisiting Inssider, we can see that my access point has gained an advantage over the others for this location. It doesn’t look significant but is enough for my iPhone and other devices to keep a stable wireless connection.

I took delivery of a Netgear FVS318N router to replace a basic hub, installed it and did a bit of cable management which involved unplugging my Sagem F@st 2504 that I use as a modem.

However upon powering up the Sagem after tidying cables, it has no life, apart from this strange arrangement of light on the front:

I called Sky (my ISP) support who happily informed me that there is a common issue with the power supply to the Sagem router that caused them to fail. Wanting to get back on the net immediately and conversation about a replacement power supply giving vague delivery lead times, I opted to purchase the new Sky branded router (dubbed the Sky Hub):

The outage lasted 5 days as I waited for delivery of the new modem. An annoyance of this is that I had a spare, working ADSL modem but this could not be used as Sky does not give out the credentials to log on to their network, instead choosing to pre-load them on the modem before shipping.

Overall its an example of the unexpected issues that can arise when running a home server on a budget.

BOOTNOTE:

It has been mentioned in many Sky internet forums that using an unapproved Sky router, i.e. one not supplied by Sky, will be in breach of the Terms & Conditions. However whilst on the phone to Sky broadband technical support the representative told me that it was acceptable to use a 3rd party router if the user was confident and acknowledged that no support would be given unless a Sky provided router was used.

The case may be that you still need to hand over the cash to Sky for one of their routers and keep it to hand, but after that the choice is yours!