Setup

One thing about a managed switch (especially those with a WebUI) is that they have to have an IP address to work. It can be a pain to find out this address and then get everything configured from there. To help with this NETGEAR includes a utility that allows you to quickly find and configure any NETGEAR switch in your network. This is called the SmartControlCenterManager (quite a long name really). During this installation the system will install Adobe AIR. After the installation you may get an error saying that AIR cannot start, but after a quick update to AIR everything will be ok.

Once you get the software installed (a very simple installation) you can quickly find the NETGEAR switches on your network. The discovery takes very little time (about 2-3 seconds). After the discovery process you can begin the configuration process. When you click on the "configure device" button this is where you would setup a static IP right from this piece of software without ever having to open the WebUI. You can also change the password, reboot the device and open the WebUI all from this one page.

On the Maintenance page you can save or restore the system configuration to the selected device.

The Tasks page is supposed to show you any active tasks (for lack of a better word) that are scheduled for the devices available. The problem here is that although we setup a few tasks in the GS110TP (powering down the POE ports), we never did see them pop up here.

The Help page was no help at all. We clicked on the Apply button as directed and were treated to a page that told us that this product would be coming in Q1 2010......