Managed vs Unmanaged Switches: Choosing the Right One for Your Network

hey hey what's up Mike this is guys welcome back to the channel today's video is all about networking switches everything you need to know and we're going to cover three different concepts or topics first the differences between switches managed versus unmanaged and next we're going to talk about how many switches can you have in your home network is there a hard limit or is it unlimited and third we're going to explain how unmanaged switches send and receive data and guys if you don't know this my name is Mike I love technology I love networking I love computer build I love TVs theming consoles all things technology if you enjoy these things as well make sure to hit subscribe and the bell notifications and while you're there give a thumbs up and share this video and guys consider joining our patreon page where $2 a month helps keep this channel going and the perks that you enjoy for $2 a month is a personal thank you at every new video also included is one tech support question per month and the last perk is you're automatically enrolled into any giveaways that we have and we do giveaways every 5 or 6 months let's get started so first what are the differences between a managed switch and an unmanaged switch when designing your home network a network switch is effectively the brain of your network these switches connect all devices together on a land local area network and these switches are constantly redirecting and forwarding data to the correct destination Network switches come in various sizes and these switches can have up to 48 ports so what the actual difference between a managed switch and an unmanaged switch in the most simplest of terms an unmanaged switch allows you to immediately Plug and Play devices into your network while a managed switch allows for much greater control an unmanaged switch is simple you connect all your ethernet devices to it with no configurations an unmanaged switch is perfect for the person who values convenience over Security on the other hand a managed switch allows you to manage configure and monitor the settings of your land including controls over land traffic prioritizing certain channels and create new virtual lands to keep smaller groups of devices segregated and to better manage their traffic and a managed switch also has features that can recover data in the event of a device or network failure and an unmanaged switch has none of those features as far as performance and security a managed switch surpasses an unmanaged switch however an unmanaged switch is easier to use yeah baby yeah and costs far less than a manage switch so part two let's talk about how many switches you can have in your home network and do multiple switches slow down your network well I'll answer both questions in a minute but a more important question is how many switches should you have in a single home network well this answer will vary depending on the size of your house and the size of your home network so for example if you have a three-bedroom house and a family room and a living room and most new home builders will install one ethernet cable per room this will give you a total of five ethernet cables however if you install these cables yourself install two cables per room and when I say ethernet cables I mean cat 5 or cat 6 Cat 5 and Cat 6 are the most popular in the industry however cat 6 has become the standard over the last few years so now we have five ethernet cables going to five different rooms and these five ethernet cables should originate from a network panel and in case you missed it I do have a video called where do the ethernet cable go and there'll be a link right here to that video so first in this network panel you should have an eight Port switch or a 10 Port switch since most routers only have four lamp ports you will definitely need to switch since you have five ethernet cables that you need to connect so now you have five rooms connected with ethernet cables to optimize this ethernet cable connection you should connect a five port switch to each room by by doing so this will give you four more ports per room and these four extra ports will allow four more devices like TVs streaming devices gaming consoles another PC and this list can go on and on so you can see why it's important to have extra ports in each room so back to the original question how many switches can you have in a single Network well there's no limit to how many switches you can have in a single Network however the best practice would be to have one switch per ethernet cable and no more than that so at the end of each ethernet cable you can connect a switch and there's no real reason to have two switches per ethernet cable you could tether two together with a crossover cable but they do sell five port eight port and even 10 Port switches and in a single home network an eight Port switch or even a 10 Port switch should be plenty of ports and we use TP link and net gear for our switches and both are very reliable and connecting a switch to an ethernet port is very easy simply plug the switch into an outlet for power and plug your ethernet cable into the switch now if you have a five port switch you have an ethernet cable going into one port and now you have four more ports available for devices and if you need more than four ports then buy an eight Port switch or even a 10 Port switch all right guys part three let's talk about how these switches send and receive data and I'm talking about an unmanaged switch switches connect Network segments and provide full duplex communication so the big question is how does a switch work when a device is connected to a switch the switch notes the MAC address of that device and that code is baked into the network interface card of that device and once again this is a MAC address which stands for media Access Control now the switch uses that Mac address to identify which attached device outgoing packets are being sent from and where to deliver incoming packets layer 2 Network switches maintain a table in memory that matches Mac addresses to the switch's ethernet net ports this table is called a Content addressable memory table or cam for short the switch is Cam table is stored in memory if the switch is turned off the table will disappear and the switch has to relearn the table when it's rebooted and when devices on the switch begin sending messages the switch will start recording Mac addresses and the ports that the messages came in on so for instance when computer a sends a message to computer B on the switch the switch does not know where computer B is so the switch forwards computer A's message to all computers on the network except for computer a and this is known as flooding so when computer B replies the switch records computer B's Mac address and Port as well so the MAC address identifies the physical device as opposed to a network layer 3 IP addresses which can be assigned dynamically to a device and change over time when a device sends a packet to another device it enters the switch and then the switch reads its header to determine what to do with it it then matches the destination address or addresses and then sends the packet out through the appropriate port or ports and that Port leads to the destination device so guys that's it thank you for watching make sure to like share subscribe and for God's sakes hit the Bell icon and we'll see you in the next video real soon peace