Allied Telesis CentreCOM AT-GS980MX/28PSm - Switch - L3 - Managed - 20 x 10/100/1000 (PoE+) + 4 x 100/1000/2.5G/5G (PoE+) + 4 x 1 Gigabit / 10 Gigabit SFP+ - rack-mountable - PoE+ (370 W)

Product Overview

AI-generated summary

For £1,203 ex-VAT, this Allied Telesis CentreCOM AT-GS980MX/28PSm feels aimed at buyers who want a very “grown-up” campus-edge access switch with serious uplink flexibility, not a cheap stack of ports. The PoE+ capacity makes it a sensible choice if you’re powering a mix of business-critical devices—think VoIP phones, Wi‑Fi APs, and security gear—without having to compromise on uptime or juggling power budgets. The L3/managed angle also matters: if you need VLAN routing, cleaner segmentation, or you simply want predictable behaviour with less “mystery meat” than basic switches, this is the sort of box IT teams tend to like.

That said, I wouldn’t buy it just because it has lots of port options. The real question is whether you actually need the L3 feature set and the specific uplink speeds you’re paying for—otherwise there are usually cheaper managed switches that do 80% of the job. Also, Allied Telesis gear can be excellent, but it’s not always the default in every reseller ecosystem, so make sure you’re comfortable with the management/firmware support path in your environment (and that your staff are familiar with it). If you’re building a small-to-medium network edge with PoE-heavy endpoints and want managed control without going overboard, it’s a solid buy. If your use case is mostly “plug in access ports,” I’d look for better value elsewhere.