About

We help people buy used network gear for a home lab without getting burned. Name the one you’re after, like a Cisco Catalyst 3750X, a Juniper EX2200, an HP 2530 or a MikroTik hEX, and there’s a page for it. Each one tells you the model’s story, its ports, which license or feature set it runs, whether the maker still supports it, how loud and hungry it is, and what to check before you buy.

Some buyers are studying for a CCNA or JNCIA. Others want a quiet switch for the closet or a router they can learn on. What owners know about this gear is scattered across datasheets, end-of-life notices and forum threads, and a raw eBay search gives you none of it. So we keep 30 model pages in one place, write down the things that catch used buyers out (the wrong license, a locked password, a missing power supply, no optics, fans you can hear through a wall) and pick the listings we’d buy.

We don’t sell network gear. No affiliate links. We earn nothing. We only recommend what we’d buy, and we’d rather you buy used. We run no analytics or tracking cookies, and we’re not affiliated with any networking maker. See how we work for how the pages are researched and our disclosure for how links, picks and photos work.

Patch Panel is part of allbutnew, a set of shops for secondhand gear. Got a switch or router to sell? The “Get an offer” link on every model page sends it to our networking gear expert, who replies by email.