Netgear M4250-26G4F-PoE++ (GSM4230UP-100EUS) AV Line Managed Switch

The Netgear M4250-26G4F-PoE++ (GSM4230UP-100EUS) is a 30-port fully managed AV over IP switch built from the ground up for professional broadcast and live production environments. The M4250 series was built entirely around AV-over-IP operational realities, not retrofitted from an IT platform. Its 24 rear-facing Ultra90 PoE++ ports comply with the 802.3bt standard, each capable of delivering up to 90 W — and the total 1,440 W PoE budget supports simultaneous powering of IP PTZ cameras, NDI encoders, AV-over-IP receivers, and wireless access points from a single rackmount unit, eliminating separate power injectors across the installation.

What separates the GSM4230UP from generic switches is its AV-native management layer. The dedicated AV web interface ships with factory-configured port profiles for the main AV-over-IP protocols — NDI, Dante, Q-SYS, AES67, SDVoE, NVX (AMX), Kramer KDS, ZeeVee, and Atlona — assignable per port without touching the CLI. Multicast traffic is managed by NETGEAR IGMP Plus™: IGMP snooping and proxy for IPv4, MLD snooping and proxy for IPv6, and automatic querier election ensure video streams only consume bandwidth on segments with active receivers. Across multi-camera broadcast studios and digital signage networks alike, traffic distribution stays predictable without manual per-port configuration. The two additional 1GbE RJ45 ports and four 1G SFP slots handle uplinks to M4300 or M4500 aggregation switches.

The switching engine runs on a 1.8 GHz ARM Cortex-A57 quad-core CPU with 2 GB of RAM, yielding 60 Gbps of switching bandwidth and a 44.64 Mpps forwarding rate. Layer 2 features include 802.1Q VLANs, 802.1p/DSCP QoS, RSTP/MSTP, per-port storm control, ACL access restrictions, and jumbo frame support to 9,198 bytes — relevant for uncompressed AV-over-IP streams in NDI and SDVoE pipelines. All ports are on the rear panel of the 1U chassis, keeping front-of-rack cabling clean in touring and permanent installs. Fan noise in quiet mode reaches 27.44 dBA at 25°C; under low ambient temperatures and reduced PoE loads, the fans cut out entirely — a concrete benefit in acoustically sensitive broadcast control rooms and recording environments.