[:XI:]

What's the diff?

Pros and cons of each?

I'm not purchasing or anything, just curious.

Anyone know?

[ghporter]

Managed switches require management, that is to say they need to have attention paid to them on a regular basis. On the other hand, you usually have a lot of flexibility with them, as far as what the various ports on the device will do. Often, managed switches offer "quality of service" management, which includes limiting how much bandwidth a particular port is allowed, assigning bandwidth priorities to various ports, and other, advanced options. Managed switches are almost always much more expensive than unmanaged switches.

An unmanaged switch gives every port an even share of the available bandwidth, and requires only setup-often the default initial setup is more than adequate.

It comes down to how much time you want to spend on the options a managed switch can give you, along with how much extra you're willing to spend.

Did that help?

[Camelot]

I don't necessarily agree with the "they need to have attention paid to them on a regular basis" statement, GH.

Managed switches do provide additional features over unmanaged switches but, by and large, once set you can pretty much leave them alone unless you need to reconfigure the switch for any reason. I have a number of managed switches in my network that I haven't needed to touch in a long time.

Other features of managed switches include SNMP support (so you can monitor the switch ports), VLANs (so you can segregate specific ports into logical groups), Quality of Service (QoS) support (where you can prioritize certain traffic over other, less important traffic), plus more.

Of course, not all switches support all features, but any managed switch is going to be more sophisticated than an unmanaged switch (that does little more than limiting broadcast traffic).

[:XI:]

So a managed switch is more versatile, while an unmanaged switch is more 'plug and play' (less to setup)?

Thanks.

[ghporter]

Camelot's right-I both tried to keep things simple and incorporated a recent rant from a local administrator...;/

Anyway, XI, your statement is correct. You choose from either the versatility of a managed switch or the simplicity of an unmanaged switch.