Every Lysora switch, and how to pick the right one

A switch datasheet leads with port count because it is the easiest number to print. It is almost never the number that decides whether the switch will work. This guide goes through the thirteen Lysora switches by what actually separates them — how much power they can deliver, how fast the uplink is, how many VLANs they can carry, and how hot they can get before they stop.

Start with power, not ports

Port count tells you how many devices you can plug in. PoE budget tells you how many you can actually run. These are different numbers and they are rarely close.

Take the LS2-24GT4SFP-P: 24 PoE+ ports sharing a 370 W budget. That averages a little over 15 W per port. A fixed dome camera drawing 8 W is comfortable. A PTZ with a heater drawing 30 W is not — put twelve of those on it and the budget is gone with half the ports still empty.

Lysora publishes a camera-capacity figure per switch at both 200 W and 400 W class, which is unusually useful and worth using. The LS2-24GT4SFP-P is rated for 120 cameras at 200 W class; the 48-port LS2-48GT4SFP-P for 200. Those numbers go into a quote so the budget is checked before the purchase order rather than during handover.

The five families

LCS — cloud managed

Four models, from a 4-port desktop unit with a 54 W budget up to a 24-port rack switch with 370 W. Managed entirely from the cloud console with no CLI. The catch to know about: they cap at 16 VLANs. For a camera closet or a small office that is plenty. The moment someone says the word segmentation seriously, you have outgrown them.

LS2 — Layer 2 managed

The step up that matters: 4094 VLANs instead of 16, DHCP snooping, IP-MAC-port binding and loop prevention. Three sizes — 8, 24 and 48 ports — plus a non-PoE 24-port model for when the devices bring their own power and you only want 21 W of total draw.

LCS-4GS-PFanless desktop PoE for a camera closet or a four-desk office.LCS-24GS-PRack-mount 24-port cloud PoE with a 370 W budget.LS2-48GT4SFP-PForty-eight PoE+ ports for a full floor or a camera aggregation rack.LS2T-8GT2SFP-HPDIN-rail Layer 2 PoE rated from −40 to +65 °C.

LS2P — Layer 2+ multi-gig

This is the family that exists because of Wi-Fi 7. A tri-band access point is rated well past 10 Gbps of air capacity; hang it off a Gigabit port and you have bought radios you can never use. Both models give 2.5G access ports with 10GE SFP+ uplinks, plus static routing, 802.1X and IP source guard.

The 16-port model is the newest switch in the range and the only one with PoE++ on some ports, which matters for 60 W devices. It is also the only switch in the range with fans rather than passive cooling — worth knowing before you put it in an open office rather than a rack room.

LS3 — Layer 3

One model, and it is the only one in the range that routes properly: static routing plus OSPFv2 and OSPFv3, 24 SFP ports with eight available as RJ45 combo, four 10GE SFP+ uplinks and 128 Gbps of switching capacity. This is the fibre aggregation point for a campus — the thing every floor switch uplinks into.

LS2T and LCST — industrial

DIN-rail, fanless, IP40, and rated where commercial switches derate and then fail. The LS2T is Layer 2 managed and runs −40 to +65 °C, up to +80 °C in a ventilated enclosure. The LCST is cloud managed, runs −40 to +75 °C, and has a PoE++ port within a 300 W maximum.

Uplinks: the part people under-spend on

An access switch is only as useful as the path out of it. Three rules that hold almost everywhere:

• Aggregate on fibre, not copper. Every managed model here has SFP or SFP+ uplinks — use them, and keep recording or backup traffic off the access layer twice over.
• Match the uplink to the access speed. Eight 2.5G ports behind a single Gigabit uplink is the same mistake as a Wi-Fi 7 AP on a Gigabit port, one layer up.
• Terminate uplinks on something that routes. The LS3 with OSPF keeps each floor its own broadcast domain instead of stretching one VLAN across a building.

A worked example

Three-floor office, 40 desks a floor, 12 Wi-Fi 7 access points total, 30 cameras, dual internet circuits. What that comes to: