When life gives you lemons, make lemonade – create a safe and friendly work and home entertainment haven

If like me you are a business and/or IT professional working from home during these Covid restricted times, we and others like yourselves may have considered or already started adding sanity saving devices and tech into your homes / networks – in a bid to make the new home, family and working environment enjoyable and possible. This might involve the addition of integrated IoT devices, IP cameras, multiple wireless access points, Google or Alexa, smart lights, kitchen appliances, new gaming consoles, fitness apps, home entertainment systems for streaming movies / music, laptops and tablets for access to back office and cloud business applications – you want all of this to connect and work seamlessly without compromise.

Of course you have to consider the demand for improved internet experience, security, data protection, governance & compliance to name a few. You may have existing routers and switches and other old networking devices in our homes, but are you expected to understand and manage all of this on our own? How do we make this utopia come to life when our back office, cloud and home network either does not exist or is not technically sufficient / capable of supporting such things without constant headaches. In order to properly configure the network for maximum efficiency, it is a good idea to employ the use of network managed switches.

Running a network with unmanaged switches just isn’t feasible, for example let’s take a VoIP (Voice over IP) telephone call or video conference session. It would be a good idea to prioritise this app, as the information needs to be travelling in real-time over your network and the Internet. Any network disruptions can quickly become quite annoying if you’re trying to talk to someone on the video call. So let’s look at the benefits of upgrading to managed switches to get the network you want.

For network administrators, operation managers, business owners, home working and home schooling warriors out there, the ramifications have been profound, you should identify networking equipment vendors that are positioned to meet changing requirements for access network connectivity, automation and management. The underlying infrastructure must become more agile, flexible, consistent across all environments, automated provisioning, easy visibility, management and performance monitoring of your network from a central point, maximise uptime, fast fault and security remediation, ensure policies around applications and online experience, analytics and reporting – very simply cannot be achieved using basic networking devices.

 

Why upgrade from an unmanaged to managed switches

If you are a non-technical business discussion maker, we will cover a brief description around the key difference between basic unmanaged switches and managed switches. The main difference for managed switch is having more granular control to configure your switches, traffic, connected devices and security on your network – how can you argue with that?

Go Green With Your Network

You now have the choice to go green when upgrading to managed switches. This new generation switches features the latest innovative energy-efficient technologies that can greatly expand your network capacity with much less power. Automatically adjusts power consumption according to the link status to limit the carbon footprint of your network. For example, when a computer or piece of network equipment is off, the corresponding port of a traditional switch will continue to consume considerable amounts of power. Reduce the power consumption of ports that are idle, resulting in up to an 80% reduction in power use.

Quality of Service (QoS)

Ability to prioritise network connections - whether you are running video conferences, online trading while family members are trying to stream Netflix or on a video games console like an Xbox or PlayStation, you'll want maximum bandwidth speed and quality to the business apps, the rest of your network will be throttled back to limit buffering or vice versa.

Performance

Unmanaged switches have limited or no tools for monitoring network activity or performance. Managed switches allow you to monitor and alert on the health of the network or particular device. Quickly detect and repair network problems – remotely if needed.

You will typically see a network switch identified as a 10/100 Ethernet, 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet switch. This refers to the maximum network speed the switch will support per connection.

Security

Open ports on unmanaged switches are a security risk, plugging in of unmanaged devices and no protection against viruses from spreading. Managed switches have some major security benefits, such as the ability to monitor and control the network, port security to disable ports and prevent unauthorised access, shut down active threats, protection for data, control. You need advanced security built into your network devices to combat today’s complex attacks. Ring-fencing work vs leisure devices.

Virtual LANs

Logically group devices together to isolate traffic between these groups even when other traffic is passing over the same physical switch. The segmentation and isolation of network traffic helps reduce unnecessary traffic in key areas. This allows better network performance and in many cases provides an additional level of security.

Redundancy

This can ultimately prevent expensive downtime, which you will appreciate. This feature allows you to create alternative data paths in case a connection/cable fails. This helps in safeguarding your network traffic and keep it running smoothly.

Unlimited scalability

Expand or scale back your network as business or life demands with ease. Up to 104 Mbps Switching Capacity - Superior switching capacity keeps data moving thick and fast, even during peak hours.

PoE Power over Ethernet

Conveniently power devices via Ethernet / network cable for an easy installation and a simple, clean setup (no additional power point socket needed to be installed in your walls or floor).

Data Sovereignty

In these security conscious times, many companies have a policy to ensure implementation of only western manufactured IT products. The U.S. government and allies across Europe and Asia have deemed some Chinese networking gear untrustworthy. Governments and businesses alike are concerned that foreign data could be harvested or manipulated by the Chinese government, which has reserved the right to demand cooperation in surveillance activities from domestic vendors.

 

Conclusion

Without a managed switch you cannot configure and run these kind of smart homes or offices. Making the right investment in feature rich, costs effective networking equipment will save headaches and stress you just don’t need during these trying times.

D-Link - A range of feature rich network switches designed for offices and smart homes.

DGS-2000 is a series of Gigabit Managed Switches. The key to the DGS-2000 is that it's our entry level managed switch, so more cost effective whilst retaining the functionality - allowing an aspiring SME to grow and scale their business with their network.