Coming in a close second to snag the silver award in our stackable switches category was the DES series from D-Link. The switches ranked high in almost every criteria but fell short in vendor service and support -- only 56% of users rated them good or excellent in that area.

Elsewhere, however, D-Link's DES series scored high, more than 86% of users praising it for throughput; network integration and interoperability; and ease of installation, configuration and administration. Eighty percent also felt that they were getting their money's worth.

"We have never had to call for support; the item has never broken," one user commented. Another user said it was "easy to use on the smaller network segments, where on-the-fly installation is required."