TOPIC: difference between switch unmanaged

excuse me for my poor english, j'm italian.

there are many switch unmaneged, but which are the principal characteristic that need to control before to buy a switch?

monica

Hi monica,

I think most of us don't speak that well Italian so no excuses needed

Anyway here's my input: Most of the so called non-managed switches don't offer any management interface (or very limited). So as a result of that they lack some pretty interesting features:

VLAN creation
Port configuration (auto-negotiation, speed, etc..)
QOS
Trunking
etc..

So it really depends on your needs. If you just look for something that gets your packet from port a to b then an unmanaged switch will do just fine. If your into some more complicated configs than you should look out for the features above.

I'm sure he moderators and senior members can add some usefull info to that

Greetings (ciao)

Stefan

Stefke is absolutely right.. the advantages of a managed switch is that you can get it to switch traffic in particular ways.. for example VLAN's...

In other words, you can craft data transmission at layer 2.. an unmanaged switch is just like a dumb data pusher..

Imagine the difference between traffic being managed by a smart traffic policeman who can judge different situations or by just a traffic light.


Cheers,

Great analogy sahirh!