Replenishment in light weight. Or new low-port switches Ubiquiti

For a long time, we have been using EdgeSwitch switches , powerful L3 PoE switches for reasonable money. However, the number of ports in these devices starts from 24, and the 24-port model does not differ in compact dimensions. Thus, as the terminal low-port PoE switch, it was still necessary to use the second-level ToughSwitch switch of 2012, which is quite modest in its capabilities, for example, it does not have SFP slots. However, everything is changing, today we will look at 3 new models of Ubiquiti switches: 8 and 16-port UnifiSwitch with 2 SFP ports and an optical aggregation switch EdgeSwith 12F.

The Unifi Switch 8 switch has 8 1000 Base-T gigabit ports and 2 SFP slots. In terms of functionality, we have a full-fledged Unifi switch with a PoE-budget of 130 watts in the desktop version and the ability to integrate with the UniFi controller.
Consider the new model in more detail, in comparison with the Tough Switch .

Model	POE Budget	Number of ports	Connection to the controller UniFi	Cost of
UnifiSwitch 8	130	8 Gigabit Ethernet + 2 SFP	Yes	227.5
Touch switch 8	80	8 Gigabit Ethernet	Not	196

We see that we have not lost anything and even gained in the functional and PoE budget. It is logical to expect an early withdrawal of ToughSwitch Pro from production. The second switch, which I see as the replacement for ToughSwitch Carrier, is UnifiSwitch 16.

As you can see, this device can be mounted in a rack, however, there are also swivel mounts in the kit, allowing it to be installed in a shallow depth enclosure or in a wall.

The new switch is 40 mm narrower and 60 mm shorter than its older counterparts, but the PoE budget has become the price of compactness, it is only 130 watts, as well as for the 8-port model. However, the Ubiquiti switch line expands not only downwards, but upwards.
The new switch EdgeSwitch 12F refers to the level of aggregation and offers 12 SFP slots and 4 1000 Base-T ports.

Thus, it becomes possible to build a small network entirely on Ubiquiti switches, without using third-party aggregation switches.

The only thing in this implementation, I would like to mention some limited L3 EdgeSwitch functionality. The system supports only 238 arp. records, respectively, if there are more devices on the network, avalanche begins, the load on the processors of network devices, the loss of network connectivity. Thus, in large EdgeSwitch networks, it is better to use it in L2 mode, since it is limited to the size of mac table = 8000 records.

And, of course, I want to wait for the release of EdgeSwitch-8 from Ubiquiti - the UnifiSwitch functionality, from a network point of view, is somewhat curtailed, and the UnifiSwitch functionally is closer to Touch Switch than to EdgeSwitch.