The reason you need to know what you’re doing isn’t just so you can understand what each individual setting means. After all, these days you can use a quick internet search to learn about terms like port speed, port mirroring, and virtual LANs. In fact, terms like redundancy and traffic prioritization will probably make sense to people without any technical knowledge.
The reason you need to know what you’re doing is so that you can navigate your way through the practical implications of these concepts. In some cases, these will be obvious but in other cases, there may be more nuance.
For example, in most situations, you will clearly want to prioritize VoIP phones over printers. Streaming video, however, may pose more of a challenge. On the one hand, you may be willing to throttle bandwidth for staff browsing the internet on their breaks. On the other hand, you don’t want to throttle video presentations or video-based learning.
What is the difference between managed and unmanaged switches?
In simple terms, managed switches deliver maximum performance if you know how to use them. Unmanaged switches will typically deliver a lower level of performance but are essentially “plug and play” solutions. If you do your research, you may well find an unmanaged switch designed with your situation in mind. You would, however, need to get very lucky to find a perfect match.
More info: What Is Managed Datacenter Service
