I believe that if your purpose of the switch is just for a basic switch. I think the cheap ones do the exact same thing that the expensive ones do.

There was one day that lightning hit my building or perhaps extremely close to it. I am not sure exactly what happen but it really screwed up almost all my electronics.

The following morning,
1. my Router was dead
2.My network Switch was dead.( Port# 4 lights up even when no cable is attached and no ports work
3. Network card in a computer broke
4. there were 2 ports on my phone system(Nitsuko 124I) were dead. Phones had the message( startup process) forever.
5.Sound card is flaking out
6.My LCD monitor stopped working a few days later.
It will not even turn on.

The strange thing is that I have my equipment hooked up to UPS should clean up the power and protect against power surges. However, I had lot of damage to try to fix.

Would this be the result of a EMP from the lighting rather than a power surge?