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An unmanaged switch is a glorified hub. It means that the switch does its thing with no user interaction. For most people, that's quite all right. The switch's benefits over a hub are full bandwidth to each port, rather than smushing all the data over all the ports like a hub, and dealing with collisions.

A Managed switch has its own IP address, and has a telnet and maybe a web-based interface to monitor and secure access to each port on the switch. A managed port can have VLANs, which effectively break up different ports on a switch into different switches. This can be useful when you have a lot of ports but you'd like to, forinstance, separate direct connection to the Internet for a few computers, from the rest of your local area network.

A managed switch can tell you about excessive usage on certain ports. It can be used to limit the number of IP addresses that one port can service. This is important if you want one computer for one port, forinstance. It makes sure nobody plugs a hub into a wall and shares off more connections without talking to the administrator first. A managed switch can also be used to enable or disable specific ports without unplugging a cable.

This pretty much scratches the surface of what a managed switch can do for you. There is also logging ability, traffic management, and a lot more. But if you never need any of this, an unmanaged switch is adequate for many businesses.

cas wrote:Unmanaged switches should be easier to setup as compare to managed switch, right? As the former is just plug n play without the need to configure anything whereas managed switch must. (correct me if i'm wrong)

Lastly hyperterminal or TEP must surely be use when configuring a managed switch? Over here i'm referring to netgear switches

Say if i were to implement switch to a company and to save the hassle and complexity of configuring should i opt for a unmanaged switch instead?