What is the difference between a managed switch and an unmanaged switch?

Comments

• IcedRaktajino@startrek.website ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  An unmanaged switch is just a single plane where all ports are equal.

  Managed switches (also sometimes known as “smart” switches) provide additional features on top of that. The most useful is VLANs (virtual LANs) which let you segregate traffic. Two ports on different VLANs share the same physical layer (layer 1) but are separated at the data link layer (layer 2).

  Additionally, managed switches let you do things like disable/enable ports (for security, power savings, etc), enable port mirroring, and combine multiple ports into an aggregation group (e.g. bond four 1 Gb links into one 4 Gb link).

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  • ThePantser@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    My favorite feature is being able to selectively reboot the POE ports for my security cameras. I have Blue Iris tell Home assistant that a camera is offline and then with the home assistant integration for Netgear it sends the reboot POE command.

    Some reolink cameras get in a weird mode where rtsp is broken but direction connecting to the cam stays working. I could issue the reboot command directly from the reolink integration but I find a full power reboot keeps them running longer than just a reboot.

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  • chocrates@piefed.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I had a nasty virus in my network and had to get a managed switch to port mirror into an ids. Sadly my IDs was so badly configured I never found it that way. Random repeated virus scans on all the windows gear in the house finally found it

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• shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  If OP is asking such a question, y’all are probably making your answers too complicated.

  Unmanaged switch: All the ports are equal. Plug anything in anywhere, it works, done.

  Managed switch: There is a world of options to control how data moves in and out of those ports. You can really go nuts!

  Your basic home or business user only needs an unmanaged switch, good enough.

  A home user that wants to learn, build a home lab, managed switch. A business with more complex networking and security needs, managed switch.

  As to the expense, managed switches are stupid cheap on eBay. If you want to experiment with networking, that’s the way to go.

  One more funny note, if you end up with a managed switch, but don’t need or care about the options, reset to factory and it’s now an unmanaged switch! (You can still program it of course, but you don’t have to in order to make it fly. Just plug stuff in.)

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  • thermal_shock@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    If you reset a managed one to vanilla unmanaged, at least set the admin password, don’t leave it default. Security 101.

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  • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Your basic home or business user only needs an unmanaged switch, good enough.

    I always say vlans are useful in any environments

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• db2@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Unmanaged switches just do their thing, managed switches let you tell them what that thing is.

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• henfredemars@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  An unmanaged switch is a simple, zero-configuration network device that connects multiple Ethernet devices together. This is by far the most common type of switch because they’re cheaper to make and satisfy most needs in the home and small office. There are no settings to configure, and the device generally avoids inspecting the traffic it switches. Unmanaged switches are commodity products that are all pretty much same, varying only in the number of ports and speeds provided.

  Managed switches add a central CPU for device administration. This design enables configuration settings which is usually an important precursor to have features such as VLANs, QoS, IGMP snooping, and port security. Businesses usually need managed switches to implement security policies. In addition to the added hardware, businesses have deeper pockets, and managed switches are no longer simple commodities because comparing the advanced feature set and software is no longer trivial.

  Only recently have we seen pro-sumer switches occupy the space in between these two options by offering some simple managed features (VLANs) while reserving necessary enterprise features (port security, DHCP snooping, reporting) to segment the market.

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• neidu3@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Unmanaged switches don’t care about VLAN tags, spanning trees, management interfaces, or LACP.

  Managed switches ulcare about at least some of those features and as a child will have a management interface to configure them m, as well as firmware supporting them.

  A dumb/unmanaged switch will look up the MAC address of the intended recipient and map that to a port before forwarding a packet. And a managed switch might do a lot more.

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  • Azzu@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Would you say you’re a managed switch manager? Do you have any aspirations of eventually becoming a manager of other managed switch managers?

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    • neidu3@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      I wouldn’t, as managed switching is only a small subset of the managerial tasks I attend. I don’t manage individual switches as much as I manage production systems where managed switch management is only a minor component.

      On that note, we actually use hubs in one particular place in these systems, and since I manage their installation and asset tracking, does this make them managed Ethernet hubs?

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• dhork@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Unmanaged switches are extremely dumb. They do simple things, and do them well.

  Managed switches have lots of other shiny features, which is why they are more expensive. They also have to be configured to enable those features, which means you have to know how to drive them

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• Brkdncr@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Why are they so much more expensive…

  Because people will pay that much for those features. You can find managed switches for $60 pretty easily. Until you get into the 48port blades they don’t change a whole lot, so the higher prices are typically from different ways to trick you into paying more.

  Some features like line rate, buffers, do add to the cost though.

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• nukeforyou@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  you can web into a managed switch

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