We all think of wireless when it comes to smart home and home entertainment—Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Bluetooth, Thread, Z-Wave, and what have you—but a surprising number of smart devices depend on good, old-fashioned wired ethernet for the best performance.
The Philips Hue Bridge? Needs an ethernet cable. Got an Apple TV streaming box? It does Wi-Fi, but ethernet makes it better. That smart hub? An ethernet cable would certainly boost its reliability. Running a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X? A respectable K/D ratio demands ethernet.
All those ethernet cables and ports will add up, though, and most Wi-Fi and mesh routers only serve up a handful of ethernet connections—or, most likely, only a single extra port.
That’s why I’ve been investing in ethernet switches, and my favorite—this unmanaged 5-port gigabit ethernet bridge from TP-Link—is just $13, good for a 35% savings. Plenty of other configurations are also available, including an 8-port gigabit switch for $27.99 (30% off), 16 ports for $59.99 (33% off), and even 48 ports for $179.99 (25% off).
I have three of the 5-port TP-Link bridges in my smart home: one sits under my desk, connected to my PC, my Philips Hue Bridge, and my HDHomeRun over-the-air TV tuner. The link port is connected to my mesh Wi-Fi router, and the fifth port is connecting to… yes, another ethernet bridge.
My second bridge lives in a steel cabinet in the corner of the office, and it’s all about the Raspberry Pi’s–four of them, to be exact. Those Raspberry Pi boards run a series of locally hosted applications, including HomeBridge, an app that lets me bring non-HomeKit smart devices into the Apple Home app; Home Assistant, an open-source smart home platform I’ve been tinkering with; and Plex, a self-hosted media server and DVR that works with my HDHomeRun TV tuner. My Raspberry Pi systems will work just fine over Wi-Fi, but a rock-solid ethernet connection makes them far more reliable, especially for streaming media.
Finally, my third TP-Link ethernet switch sits in the living room behind my TV, where it’s connected to my Apple TV 4K, my PlayStation 5, and my Denon AVR-x1600H, ensuring perfectly smooth streaming video, cutting down on gaming latency, and preventing audio dropouts when streaming tunes via AirPlay.
Setting up these TP-Link ethernet bridges is a snap; because they’re unmanaged (meaning they can’t assign IP addresses on their own), it’s really just a matter of connecting the link port to a nearby Wi-Fi router or mesh hub and then plugging in your ethernet devices. You can have multiple ethernet switches downstream, meaning you can daisy-chain them if necessary. An AC adapter with a small wall wart supplies the power.
I’ve been rocking these particular TP-Link switches for years now and have never had any problems; I highly recommend them if you’re running out of ethernet ports in your smart home or home theater setup—the more the merrier.
Snag a TP-Link TL-SG105 5-port gigabit ethernet switch for $12.99
