Lan Managed Switch

A switch manageable (manageable) is a Ethernet switch type which allows using a standard Web interface connected to the IP or RS232 - Telnet to manage communications over the physical network ports.

The options allow you to block some physical ports, preventing, for example, a party computers to connect to another PC or block to determine physically what PC has access to what server. This also allows to determine address ranges of ports (where several switch's - Hub are linked). They talk about QoS (quality of service) for levels of processing priorities attached to each Ethernet port. Some models create user groups using IGMP. The Jumbo Frame can exceed the 1500 byte size for the complete set of one frame in the case of Gigabit networks.

They are level 2 (layer 2 of OSI) If they can determine the addresses and Level 3 (layer 3 of OSI model) if they allow and block by ports (TCP or UDP). In a sense, they can replace an hardware firewall even if they do not analyze the modified screens and other "crafts".

Some models of switches are known as Level 4. Advertising is a term with no real reference the OSI model, but using the layer 4 of TCP / IP model (application). Theses layers 4 allows you to block network use by somes applications in completely decoding the message, particularly in terms of TCP and UDP ports used. This is the only hardware method to block peer to peer software for example.

Via an IP interface or Telnet, a Managed Switch can also remotely check who is connected to the switch Ethernet, Save or restore the configuration, update firmware, Set the lifetime of MAC addresses in the table, analyze the collisions on different ports RJ45, QOS...

Related Definitions: HUB - router - DHCP - MDI / MDIX - Meshing - Network Administrator