Do I need a managed or unmanaged Switch?

[Cavalry Canuck]

I’m building a wired network for a house I’m going to rent out. I anticipate/will encourage that my renters use table-top switches in lieu of wireless in areas where the number of items to be networked outnumber the number of wall jacks available (home entertainment, bedrooms with PCs & multiple consoles, etc.)

 

Will an unmanaged Switch be up to the task, or should I consider a manageable Switch for my main network Switch? Either way, is there a caveat that the remote table-top Switches be of the same brand as the main network Switch, or is that irrelevant?

 

Thanks for your time,

Matthew

[WereCatf]

22 minutes ago, Cavalry Canuck said:

Will an unmanaged Switch be up to the task, or should I consider a manageable Switch for my main network Switch? Either way, is there a caveat that the remote table-top Switches be of the same brand as the main network Switch, or is that irrelevant?

Unmanaged vs managed isn't about performance, it's about being able to create more specialized rules in where data goes and such. It sounds like you have no need for that, so unmanaged is fine. Also, switches being of the same brand or not is irrelevant.

[Alex Atkin UK]

The only time I've found managed is better is when mixing speeds as you can enable flow control which seems to keep things optimised better.

 

In almost all situations, unmanaged is fine.  Especially where its primarily for a broadband connection so well below the switching speed anyway.

[Cavalry Canuck]

Thanks.

 

I suppose my concern is about how the traffic is going to be managed. If I have my primary network Switch feeding into a couple different local Switches, say one living room Switch, and three different bedroom Switches, how do the input and output signals all get to the right place? 

[Alex Atkin UK]

29 minutes ago, Cavalry Canuck said:

Thanks.

 

I suppose my concern is about how the traffic is going to be managed. If I have my primary network Switch feeding into a couple different local Switches, say one living room Switch, and three different bedroom Switches, how do the input and output signals all get to the right place? 

They build a table of MAC addresses automagically so know which MAC address is connected to which port on each switch.

 

So even if you have switches as 1 - 2 - 3, 1 knows that a PC plugged into switch 3 needs its traffic sent to switch 2 and switch 2 will know to send it on to switch 3.  The whole transaction takes nanoseconds so you don't have to think about it.

 

The only consideration is if a single port on the switch might bottleneck the connection, but as were likely talking about Gigabits here, its not likely to be an issue.

 

For optimum efficiency you connect each switch to a main switch, rather than daisy-chaining them.  But for most real-world scenarios, it honestly doesn't matter.

[Cavalry Canuck]

24 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

They build a table of MAC addresses automagically so know which MAC address is connected to which port on each switch.

 

So even if you have switches as 1 - 2 - 3, 1 knows that a PC plugged into switch 3 needs its traffic sent to switch 2 and switch 2 will know to send it on to switch 3.  The whole transaction takes nanoseconds so you don't have to think about it.

 

The only consideration is if a single port on the switch might bottleneck the connection, but as were likely talking about Gigabits here, its not likely to be an issue.

 

For optimum efficiency you connect each switch to a main switch, rather than daisy-chaining them.  But for most real-world scenarios, it honestly doesn't matter.

Thanks.

 

There should be no more than a single daisy chain. Each room is going to have 1 to 3 Jacks that each have their own dedicated Ports on the main network Switch. I just wanted to make sure things won’t get mucked up when a few 5-port Switches are plugged into Jacks that lead to say, Ports 2, 5, 7, and 13 on the main network Switch (which itself is going to be a 16/24 port Switch)