Switches - managed or whatever?

Dai · 23-09-2008, 20:18

Scenario: SBS 2003 small office. Currently a dozen users, probably will expand to 15 plus a few networked printers/plotters over the next few months.

They currently have a Nortel Baystack 325-24T switch which links everything back to base.
Now this baby only does 10/100 so it has become the limiting factor in achieving gigabit speeds and is the bottleneck in the system.

I'm looking at gigabit *unmanaged* switches such as the netgear JGS524. My question is basically to do with me not fully understanding the difference between managed and unmanaged.

Fot a small-scale operation such as this, where I only have a simple network to consider, would I be shooting myself in the foot somehow by opting for an unmanaged device?

Stuart · 23-09-2008, 20:23

According to http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.co...le.php/3577421, Managed switches are technically superior (they allow you to do things like reconfigure individual ports), for a small network, they may be more cumbersome to use, and offer little real advantage for the extra expense.

They are basically designed to make large networks easier to manage. So, if you had a couple of hundred PCs to network, you might use four or five 48 port managed switches..

Dai · 23-09-2008, 20:34

A most excellent analysis. Thank you for that.

Graham M · 23-09-2008, 20:42

Save yourself a few pounds and go with an unmanaged unless you plan to scale up the business massively in the near future, managed switches are excellent at configuring things like VLANs where you need separate groups of people access only to certain servers and that kind of thing, but if you never intend on going that far, you won't go too far wrong with unmanaged

Dai · 23-09-2008, 21:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Graham M

Save yourself a few pounds and go with an unmanaged unless you plan to scale up the business massively in the near future, managed switches are excellent at configuring things like VLANs where you need separate groups of people access only to certain servers and that kind of thing, but if you never intend on going that far, you won't go too far wrong with unmanaged

That was more or less what I was thinking, having looked at the Baystack options. Most of what is possible through the management console is never likely to be used for a business on this scale.

I'm thinking that the increase in speed overall from a cheaper unmanaged switch is all good, with no obvious downside.

brundles · 23-09-2008, 21:43

El Reg has a nice example of what can happen if you don't know what you're doing with a managed switch

Dai · 23-09-2008, 21:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by brundles

El Reg has a nice example of what can happen if you don't know what you're doing with a managed switch

LOL.. sounds like I need to stick with unmanaged..

on a bad day the chips might be smarter than me..