www.NJLanParty.com

I just picked up a managed switch. I'm not sure how or why I should use it. Thoughts?

Murdock

Managed switches provide all the features of an unmanaged switch and provide the ability to configure, manage, and monitor your LAN. This gives you greater control over how data travels over the network and who has access to it.

Managed switches use protocols such as the Simple Network Management Protocol, or what we call SNMP, for monitoring the devices on the network. SNMP is a protocol that facilitates the exchange of management information between network devices. SNMP queries can determine the health of the network or the status of a particular device. By displaying this data in an easily understood format, IT managers located at a central site can monitor the performance of the network and quickly detect and repair network problems without having to physically interact with the switch.

So if you want to prioritize packets so that your game servers get higher priority you can, when they are attached to the switch. It should have a web page or interface to interact with the switch.

Yeah... So I'm thinking I don't need this at home. Maybe for the Atremis setup?

Well out of the box it will work as any other switch. Can't see any real benefit unless it has VLAN segmenting, which I doubt.
But if it does, you could created multiple Vlans with a different ip network and run multiple Artemis games, that can or cannot interact.
But we can do that with out segmented LANs, this would just keep traffic within the VLAN itself.

But troubleshooting say duplicate IP's or a bad nic is easier with the management interface.