You would have already seen a network switch but didn’t recognize what it was. Don’t worry, it’s very common because they look like our routers.

Being the more effective successor of the hub, network switches make it possible for all of the devices connected to the network to communicate with each other.

Unlike the hub that simply splits the ethernet signals, network switches can learn over time.

That’s right, they have little “brains” that enable them to remember which device is connected to a port. This makes communication much easier because different computers can “talk” and “listen” at the same time. You no longer have to deal with crashes that commonly occurred with using the hub.

There are two types of network switches: managed and unmanaged switches.

These two vary in terms of how much you can control its configurations. As its name suggests, unmanaged switches are those that you can’t tweak. Meaning, they have their presets. They have brain power, but not enough to be configured.

Managed switches, on the other hand, are the types that you can configure according to your network’s requirement. For instance, you can control the speed and you can troubleshoot problems more freely in the instance that you encounter them.

One of the things you can do with a managed switch is set up a VLAN. You would want to do this if there are devices that you don’t want to communicate with each other in your network. For example, you’d want to have all of your company laptops in a network and all mobile devices in another.

This puts up some kind of a barricade between them so that a laptop can interact with a mobile device and vice versa. This is just one of the many things you can do with a managed type. If you want to know more, feel free to contact us.