Okay, I’ve been watching lots of YouTube videos about switches and I’ve just made myself more confused. Managed versus unmanaged seems to be having a GUI versus not having a GUI, but why would anyone want a GUI on a switch? Shouldn’t your router do that? Also, a switch is like a tube station for local traffic, essentially an extension lead, so why do some have fans?
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a switch is like a tube station for local traffic, essentially an extension lead
You’re right, a basic unmanaged switch is basically that!
Managed switch is a smarter switch. For example, creating VLANs or doing port trunking.
These are generally configured on the switch GUI as you mentioned.
Think of them as a computer with dedicated software to control how the network interfaces behaves.
I feel like you would benefit from revisiting the OSI model
https://youtu.be/tkySicWdTa4?si=vivkiWeqGKyW5Wxj
Switches can have many different purposes, and can act as a router or not. This series of videos covers the OSI model, and provides some information on how many layers of the OSI model an individual switch can capture.
Thank you
so why do some have fans
As in cooling?
Switches generate a ton of heat in the ports’ copper wires, especially gigabit+ and PoE. Higher-grade consumer and industrial (think Cisco) switches also have powerful hardware because they do a lot more than packet switching – they handle QoS, VLANs, and ACL-based filtering, as well as gigabit or faster connections on all ports.
So if the switch does all of that, what does the router do?
Switches (particularly layer-3 switches) have basic routing capabilities to connect different VLANs, but that is not their focus. Their purpose is to facilitate communication between devices connected to the same subnet, and across subnets on the same LAN.
Routers specialize in communication between networks, e.g. between a LAN and the internet. They can use static routes or dynamic routnig
algorithmsprotocols (e.g. RIP, EIGRP, OSPF, BGP) to find the shortest route, often across many routers, from the source to the destination.Think of routers as intercity railway lines, and switches as local transportation.
The device that is usually referred to as a “home router” is usually a combination of a router, a switch, a wireless access point, optionally a cable modem, and sometimes a telephone modem; plus it offers services like a firewall, NAT, and sometimes VPNs. It does everything, but with a much lower performance compared to dedicated hardware.
