Home switch vs enterprise switch

[zhiming1]

Hi,

after searching for more than 2 hours, i cant find the answer. Can someone explain me the difference between those home switchs and enterprise switches?

Home switch cost 50-200 while enterprise switches cost much more, some even in thousands.

What special features does enterprise switch have?

I understand that for cisco switches, it is not easy to configure. What about others?

Thanks in advance.

[Tears4Fears]

To put it straight, Enterprise switches offers higher density (more ports) and has more functionality than SOHO switches. Nowadays, both type of switches typically come in Gigabit Ethernet capabilities. In term of performance, a home user will not notice the difference.

Enterprise switches has a whole lot of functionality. VLAN, port mirroring, mac-address filtering, stacking, QoS, AAA, SNMP, etc. Most significantly, they have fiber modules that bundles several links into a bigger pipe.

FYI, Cisco switches also have GUI to make configuration easier.

Hope it help.

[seowbin]

actually almost all the switches comes with GUI....

just that how friendly it is only (in term of how to install it, comes by default or?? easy to use, etc )

:s13:

[liangtam]

a home user dont even need that many ports

[misato]

higher grade enterprise switch has very good packet switching speed, typically listed under their specs as pps, which is another important factor that determines how good a switch is.

Other functions which defines a enterprise grade switch for example L2 / L3 functions, expandability. One of the most important feature besides function and performance I believe is the manageability. In a enterprise environment where there are 1001 network device in use, how will it be managed will be a critical point of consideration.

[hersvim]

home type suffices