For most people, as I know are asking about some questions about smart and management switches or even what’s the difference about unmanaged switches and managed switches. Now this article will give you a overview on what’s unmanaged switch, management switch and what exactly the difference between smart or managed switch.
Unmanaged switch, this switch has no configuration interface or options, which is typically found in SOHO or home environments.
Managed switch, this switch allows access to one or more interfaces for the purpose of configuration or management of features such as Spanning Tree Protocol, port speed, VLANs, etc. Managed switches feature built-in support for remote setup and management.
Smart switch is Another class of switches is the Smart Switch, which offers some of the capabilities that managed switches offer but are more limited and less expensive that a managed switch.
Next let's define the difference between Smart and Managed Switches. Basically, smart swith and managed switches have features that can be configured to perform network management functions. These functions can be as simple as setting the link speed of a port or disabling it entirely, or more complex like limiting bandwidth or grouping devices into VLANs.
At one point, the term "smart" switch was coined when network product manufacturers first introduced lower-priced managed switches. Part of the reason for the new term was to just get some attention for these new products. But a more important reason was to attempt to create a differentiation between the new (and typically less-expensive) devices and older (and typically more expensive) products.
Besides, the switch's OSL layer of operation is the second point you should take to distinguish the two switches. In general, smart switches are Layer 2 devices, just like unmanaged switches. Both operate at the Data Link layer, which handles physical addressing. Simply put, Layer 2 devices can look only at the MAC address and LLC portions of a data packet's Ethernet frame. While the management switch is in both Layer 2 and Layer 3 flavors. Layer 3 switches operate at the Network Layer, which provides network path determination and logical addressing functions. In most cases, this means that Layer 3 switches handle packets based on their IP address, which allows them to perform basic routing functions.