best managed switch

To ensure that the system will operate with other Ethernet-enabled devices and IP applications, Perle IDS Switches use IEEE standards based protocols. This also facilitates integration between industrial equipment and business office applications. These industry-recognized standards ensure the highest level of durability and adaptability under harsh environmental conditions.

Perle Knows Industrial
We have been designing industrial hardware for serial ModBus and Profinet to ethernet conversion environments for over 35 years and have used this expertise to design the toughest Ethernet switches on the market. Don’t trust your critical communications to commercial switch products. Perle Industrial Ethernet switches give you proven assurance that your system will keep running for years to come.

Choose an Industrial Switch manufacturer with technical engineers you can speak to before you purchase. Make sure you choose the right product.

If you need a technical consultation (by phone or email) to help you choose the best DIN Rail Switch for your application, Perle is easy to reach. We have sales and technical support staff around the globe to support you when you need it.

Choose a manufacturer that will give you post-sales technical support if you need help.

Perle Industrial Ethernet Switches are extremely easy to install. But, if you do get stuck, Perle will not abandon you. Our world-wide Technical Support staff can assist you with any post sales support you might need.

Managed Ethernet switches have more capability than unmanaged switches, but they also require a skilled administrator or engineer to make the most of them. A managed switch enables you to have better control of your network and all the data frames moving through it. Unmanaged switches, on the other hand, enable connected devices to communicate with one another in their most basic form.

Unmanaged switches do maintain a media access control (MAC) address table, however. This table keeps track of dynamically learned MAC addresses and the corresponding switch port on which the MAC address was learned. The inclusion of a MAC address table means unmanaged switches do offer a separate, per-port collision domain. This is a key differentiator between an unmanaged Ethernet switch and an Ethernet hub.

Managed Ethernet switches
A major difference between managed and unmanaged switches is control. A managed switch lets you adjust each port on the switch to any setting you desire, enabling you to monitor and configure your network in many ways. It also provides greater control over how data travels over the network and who has access to it. Managed switches generally offer Simple Network Management Protocol, which enables you to monitor the status of the switch and individual switch ports and gives you statistics like traffic throughput, network errors and port status.

Features available on managed switches may vary among manufacturers and models, but they often include the following:

best managed switch

Below, we compare the differences between managed and unmanaged switches.

Unmanaged Ethernet switches
Unmanaged switches use autonegotiated ports to determine parameters such as the data rate and whether to use half-duplex or full-duplex mode. Additionally, unmanaged switches have no concept of virtual LANs (VLANs). Thus, all devices belong to the same broadcast domain.

Our list of the 10 most powerful companies in enterprise networking includes the traditional networking powerhouses, with an emphasis on the extent to which they've embraced these new approaches.