I just got a new Netgear GS108T switch that I am having trouble with. I noticed it runs Linux and and you can even see processes and things running on it.

I cannot understand how to set internal VLANs on it correctly. I had the same problem with my Dell switch making it useless. I am getting the impression that most switches have a terrible interface like this.

On my existing Netgear switches, you can click the ports you want to be part of the VLAN with checkboxes. You choose the "identifier" and click which ports for it to be a part of. It could not be much simpler.

On the Dell switch and new Netgear switch they have a million mostly useless options in them. The problem I am having is when I want group 1 to talk to each other and group 2 to talk to each other I want them both to access the internet. This is not rocket science. But to have VLANs work you have to assign the VLAN members a PVID. But a port can only be assigned one PVID so the "WAN" port can either let group 1 on the Internet or group 2 on the internet but not both. How can I enable group 1 and 2 to go on the Internet?

I have personally spent untold hours on this and it just gets more and more confusing.

I don't think that switch runs L3, only L2. Its like a edge switch. So you can't route between VLANS which would be required to get that to work.

Check your manual; if there is no mention of routing, it can't do it.

So if you have a router or smart switch that can take in the VLANS, that is where you can define a static route from each VLAN to the default outbound ip. You would trunk the VLANs over a port(s) to that device and route from there.

I have this entitled in my notes: The failure of Netgear Smart Managed Pro
This is going to be in short form a little longer than my notes or it would get long if turned into prose.

These are the types of VLANs I know of:
802.1x/q layer 2
standard layer 3
port based

I know enough that I definitely did not want to do 802.1x VLANs.

I also know enough that I did not want to do layer 3 VLANs because it requires changing up IP addresses
It may not even work on this switch for one reason or another
I have lost trust in Netgear due to this incident so I do not want to coninue testing and troubleshooting
Incidentally this is how DD WRT handles VLANs
In DD WRT this works well if you understand what you are doing and are willing to change IP addresses
It requires that each VLAN have a corresponding subnet/"network" because it uses routing instead of tagging

Port based VLANs are unavailable with GS108t which is shocking
Netgear says that Smart Managed Pro provides same features as Plus with more options
This is a conflict - there is no port based mode on GS108t and no equivalent feature
As you can see I have almost zero knowledge but it seems that the switch tags "internally" in this mode
Port based works perfect with the Smart managed Plus switches
It works on my 16 port Smart Managed Plus devices and this little 5 port I bought to confirm my sanity
Staples sells managed switches in the store which is interesting

elgrandeperro - Thanks for the reply. It turns out that the switch is a layer 3 switch. I did not want to go that way though. I definitely wanted to avoid that complicated 802.1x stuff. I could not imagine coming back to it in a few months or years and understanding how that all works.

Upgrade to openwrt if it is a v3:
https://openwrt.org/toh/netgear/gs108t_v3

I read through this page here briefly:
https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/..._configuration
and did not see anything about port based VLANs. Only 802.1x stuff. From what I see on that page OpenWRT has even less features than the stock firmware. From googling some more, I see this page:
https://github.com/cydergoth/openwrt_vlan
which is miles long and has a huge amount of steps that can go wrong and he is having to write scripts and stuff. No thanks to any of that. I must stress that the Netgear Smart Managed Plus switch interface is very empowering and requires just a few clicks to setup and you are on to the next thing. Smart Managed Pro is a fail.

Back to Staples with the GS108T.