TP-Link TL-SG105, TL-SG108, and the Easy Smart E Models: Which to Rack

TP-Link's unmanaged and Easy Smart switch lineup covers more ground than the model numbers suggest. The TL-SG105 is a plain five-port unmanaged switch with no software at all. The TL-SG108 is the same idea at eight ports. The TL-SG108E adds Easy Smart management, which gets you VLANs, basic QoS, and a web interface without the cost or complexity of a fully managed switch. Picking between them is less about brand loyalty and more about how much control you actually want over a switch that, in most homelabs, just needs to work.

All three share a similar compact metal chassis, no fan, and a form factor that was clearly designed for a shelf rather than a rack. Mounting one cleanly is simple once you know which mount fits which model, but the models are easy to mix up if you're ordering from memory.

The mount for this build:

Unmanaged vs Easy Smart, in practice

That shelf-first design is worth calling out directly. TP-Link ships these with a small footprint and rubber feet, built to sit on a desk or tuck behind a monitor, not to bolt into anything. There's no rail-ear option from the factory, no 19-inch or 10-inch variant, and no rack-aware accessory in the box. Getting one into a rack cleanly means a third-party mount sized to the actual chassis, not an adapter TP-Link ever intended you to use.

This is common across the budget switch category generally, not just TP-Link. The savings that keep these switches cheap come partly from skipping any rack hardware entirely, on the assumption that most buyers are putting the switch on a desk or a shelf at home. Homelab users who want their gear in a proper rack are a minority of the market these switches are designed for, which is exactly why a purpose-built mount is worth the small added cost over leaving the switch loose.

The plain 10" TP-Link TL-SG105 Switch Mini Rack Mount - 1U and TL-SG108 are plug-and-forget switches. Power them, plug in your cables, done. No login, no firmware to patch, no feature to misconfigure at 11pm. For a lot of homelab setups, that's a feature rather than a limitation.

The 10" TP-Link TL-SG108E Switch Mini Rack Mount - 1U trades that simplicity for actual control. Tagged VLANs, port-based QoS, and a basic web UI are enough for most homelab segmentation needs without stepping up to a fully managed switch with its own learning curve. If you're running a UniFi gateway and want a VLAN-aware switch downstream without UniFi's switch pricing, the SG108E is a reasonable middle step.

The TP-Link SG108P Rack Mount 10" Mini Rack - 1U (Modular) adds PoE on top of the Easy Smart feature set, which matters if you're powering access points or cameras off the same switch and don't want a separate injector cluttering the rack.

Why these need their own mount

These switches are shallow and light compared with a managed switch of the same port count, and a generic mount sized for a heavier chassis leaves the unit loose inside the cavity. Our mount for this family is sized to the actual chassis dimensions rather than a generic 1U footprint, which keeps the switch from rattling against the mount under normal handling and vibration.

At 1U, roughly 44.45 mm under EIA-310-D, there's no cooling consideration to speak of since none of these models use a fan. The only real fit question is depth and whether the port layout on your specific unit matches what the mount expects.

None of these switches ship with rack ears or mounting holes from the factory, so whatever mount you use is doing all of the structural work on its own rather than supplementing something the manufacturer already provided. Weight is light enough across this whole family that the mount's job is mostly about preventing lateral shift rather than carrying load. A heavier managed switch benefits from a mount that distributes weight across multiple screw points. These switches benefit more from a snug cavity that keeps the chassis from sliding when a cable gets tugged, which is the more common real-world failure mode for a light unmanaged switch in a rack.

Power and PoE budget

The unmanaged and Easy Smart non-PoE models draw very little, roughly in line with any small fanless switch. Power isn't a planning factor worth spending much time on for the TL-SG105, TL-SG108, or TL-SG108E.

The SG108P is a different conversation. PoE budget is the number that matters, not the switch's own draw. Add up what your access points and cameras actually need and check it against the switch's total PoE budget before you assume every port can run at full power simultaneously. Running close to the ceiling on a budget switch is a common way to end up with an access point that reboots under load for no obvious reason.

Where this fits next to a bigger switch

A lot of homelab racks end up with one of these small switches as a secondary drop rather than the primary switch. A TL-SG108 feeding a closet or a single room off the main switch, mounted in the same rack as everything else, is a common and sensible pattern. It keeps the cable count on your primary switch lower and isolates a single-room failure from the rest of the network.

If you're running one of these as your only switch, that's fine too, especially in a small apartment or a single-room setup where eight ports is plenty. Just be honest about whether you'll outgrow it in a year, since swapping a switch later means re-patching every cable currently plugged into it.

Port count is the usual growth constraint, and it's worth buying one size up from what you need today rather than exactly matching your current device count. Adding a ninth device to a full eight-port switch later means either buying a second switch and uplinking it, which eats a port on both ends, or replacing the switch outright and redoing every connection. Both are more work than paying for a couple of spare ports up front.

TP-Link's pitch here is straightforward: the lowest price for the feature level you actually need. A UniFi switch with equivalent Easy Smart-level features costs more and brings UniFi's controller ecosystem along with it, which some homelabs want and others see as unnecessary overhead for a single closet switch. Netgear's equivalent unmanaged and smart-managed lines sit in roughly the same price band as TP-Link's, and the choice between them usually comes down to whichever interface you've already learned rather than any meaningful feature gap.

None of this is a knock on the higher-end options. A fully managed switch with SNMP, link aggregation, and granular ACLs does things this family can't touch. The point is that most homelab segmentation needs, VLANs for IoT, a guest network, and basic QoS for a video call, don't require that much switch, and paying for features you'll never configure is money better spent on the next thing in the rack.

Cabling and port layout

Check the exact port count and layout against the listing before ordering. TP-Link's naming convention is consistent, but revisions do shuffle minor details between hardware versions carrying the same model number, and a mount sized to the wrong revision's cutouts is a frustrating thing to discover after the switch is already racked.

Dress your cables with a little slack rather than pulling them tight to the ports. These switches are light enough that a stiff cable run can tug the whole unit slightly within the mount over time, even without any vibration source.

If you're mixing cable categories on the same switch, Cat5e for an older device and Cat6 for everything else, label the ports as you go. None of these switches have a display or a management port to tell you later what's plugged in where, and an unlabeled patch panel feeding an unmanaged switch is a bad time waiting to happen the next time something needs troubleshooting.

This matters more for the SG108E and SG108P than for the plain unmanaged models, since a mislabeled port on a VLAN-aware switch can put a device on the wrong network segment without any obvious symptom until something tries to reach a resource it shouldn't have access to, or can't reach one it should.

Wrap-up

None of these switches are complicated to rack, but picking the wrong one for your needs, or ordering the wrong mount for the model, is an easy mistake to make. Decide first whether you need VLANs or PoE, then match the mount to the exact model you land on. For most homelabs, an unmanaged TL-SG108 is plenty. For anyone running a segmented network already, the SG108E earns its spot, and the SG108P covers both cases if PoE is also part of the plan.

Mounts in this build