What is the difference between manageable and unmanaged switches?

Answer 1

If you have a mnagable one you can change setting such as packet filtering, firewall, protocol filtering and so. If you have a unmanagable on you cannot change its settings. Usually managable switches are much more expensive than unmanagaable ones because of its flexibility.

Answer 2

Managed switch has the ability to traffic control, VLANS, Port blocking and a web interface for settings etc. A managed switch may also have layer 3 functionality and can be used to perform the same functions of a ROUTER.

Unmanaged switch does not have such abilities in fact no ability other simple switching i.e. they just repeat what they receive on their port to remaining ports, unmanaged switches are also called dumb such as a dumb-hub.

Futher Managed switch is good if you have more than 1000 users as that network may require traffic shaping and priorities such as voice and data etc, and yes managed switch is expensive as compare to unmanaged so think before investing....;)

hope that helps

http://atifkamal.blogspot.com

Answer 3

An unmanaged switch is a switch that has no IP address associated with it. Once a switch is given an IP address it is then considered a managed switch.