Differences between Omada Switches

This article will give a brief description of the features and application scenarios of each switch type.

Unmanaged Switch

Unmanaged switches are plug-and-play, allowing you to extend the number of Ethernet ports for your network. However, they do not allow any configuration or management options. Best for easy deployment of wired devices.

Easy Smart Switch

Easy Smart switches support basic L2 features such as VLAN, QoS, LAG, IGMP Snooping, and Port Mirroring. Unlike unmanaged switches, they can be managed either via the software utility or web interface. Easy Smart switches are best suited for home offices or small businesses.

Smart Switch

Smart switches can be managed by web interface, Telnet, SSH, and SNMP. They support more advanced functions, such as ACL and Spanning Tree protocol, as well as all the functionality of an Easy Smart switch. These are best suited for small businesses with a single location.

L2 Managed Switch

L2 managed switches have all the features and management methods of Smart Switches.  They also allow more robust VLAN and Multicast features, as well as clustering for logical stacking. Additionally, support for network security features like 802.1X and IP-MAC binding have been added.

L3 Managed Switch

L3 managed switches add support for L3 functions just like a traditional router — static routing, routing protocols like OSPF and ECMP, multicast routing protocol, and DHCP relay. They can route packets more efficiently than a conventional router, but lack certain routing features, such as VPN support. These are ideal for the core layer of a medium sized business network.