Managed and Unmanaged Switches... Which?

Question

I am planning to organise a LAN Party for aprox 45 people... If I buy two unmanaged switches with 24port 10/100 + 2port 1000... Will i have a disaster :( ... What is the difference between them in my case? Do I have to configure all pc's manually with an IP address or the unmanaged switch still does the job?
Thanks for any help

Answer 1

I have recently started to host some LAN parties as well and this is what i learned. For small parties (less than 20 people), unmanged switches are okay. you can set up all computers on DHCP and play away.



But when you start to have over 20 people, this is what I recommend. a few 24 port 10/100 switch with 2 giga bit uplink ports work okay for up to 48 computers. You can connect the two swithes via the gigabit uplink and you can connect up to 2 servers for your games on the other 2 gigabit uplinks. This helps a lot. You can still use DHCP this way.



For more control, having a managed switch with gigabit uplinks is better. connect it the same way or add a full gigabit switch to one of the gigabit uplinks if you need to connect more game servers. Turn off DHCP and assign everyone an IP address. (i also record the MAC address associted with it once they are connected) THis way, you have compete control as to who can connect to who. You can make "virtual networks" ( sorry, i don't know the actual name for this, i'm not the network guy for my parties.) and make sure that people are able to connect to only the game server they need. I have noticed a speed boost to loading times and a lot less latency when we upgraded to managed switches. We use a dedacated computer as a DHCP server if we need one and to control the switches.



Hope this helps. Party on!!!

Answer 2

Unmanaged switches don't deal with IP addresses. They are layer 2 devices only.



You can purchase multi-layer switches which are managed, and come with their own DHCP service so you can automatically assign IP's to your gamers, however I'd recommend a 48-port GIG switch if you can afford it. The difference between managed and unmanaged is that managed switches have more advanced options such as port security, vlan trunking and logging.



Unmanaged switches are purely layer 2 devices, they cannot have IP's assigned to them and they simply 'switch' traffic to the correct port.



You'll still need a router and\or DHCP server in order to dish out IP addresses to your users if you choose to use an unamanged switch or managed switch without DHCP service installed.

Answer 3

often secure practices and high quality of provider. A controlled swap enables to to enable or disable guy or woman ports, specify that merely specific MAC addresses would connect by potential of potential of a particular port, or you are able to manually stress decision of a particular velocity - computerized negotiation isn't continuously infallible. hyperlink aggregation would enable for multiple redundant links between instruments for further bandwidth, and isn't any longer obtainable on an unsupervised swap.

Answer 4

confusing situation. try searching on to the search engines. that will can assist!