No Stupid Questions

If OP is asking such a question, y'all are probably making your answers too complicated.

Unmanaged switch: All the ports are equal. Plug anything in anywhere, it works, done.

Managed switch: There is a world of options to control how data moves in and out of those ports. You can really go nuts!

Your basic home or business user only needs an unmanaged switch, good enough.

A home user that wants to learn, build a home lab, managed switch. A business with more complex networking and security needs, managed switch.

As to the expense, managed switches are stupid cheap on eBay. If you want to experiment with networking, that's the way to go.

One more funny note, if you end up with a managed switch, but don't need or care about the options, reset to factory and it's now an unmanaged switch! (You can still program it of course, but you don't have to in order to make it fly. Just plug stuff in.)

An unmanaged switch is just a single plane where all ports are equal. All ports share OSI layers 1 and 2. Anything you plug into port 24 can always reach anything you have plugged into port 3.

Managed switches (also sometimes known as "smart" switches) provide additional features on top of that. The most useful is VLANs (virtual LANs) which let you segregate traffic. Two ports on different VLANs share the same physical layer (layer 1) but are separated at the data link layer (layer 2). This lets you create up to 4096 different networks on the same switch; each network is isolated from the other. If port 24 and port 3 are on different VLANs, then they will not be able to communicate unless they can reach a common router at layer 3.

Additionally, managed switches let you do things like disable/enable ports (for security, power savings, etc), enable port mirroring, and combine multiple ports into an aggregation group (e.g. bond four 1 Gb links into one 4 Gb link).

The available features on a managed/smart switch vary by manufacturer and, often, by the license level (sadly common in enterprise gear). VLANs, port control, mirroring, and LAGs are usually common "baseline" features, though.

An unmanaged switch is a simple, zero-configuration network device that connects multiple Ethernet devices together. This is by far the most common type of switch because they're cheaper to make and satisfy most needs in the home and small office. There are no settings to configure, and the device generally avoids inspecting the traffic it switches. Unmanaged switches are commodity products that are all pretty much same, varying only in the number of ports and speeds provided. These are made in large volumes.

Managed switches add a central processor (CPU) for device administration. This design enables configuration settings which is usually an important precursor to have features such as VLANs, QoS, IGMP snooping, and port security. Businesses need managed switches to implement security policies. In addition to the added hardware, businesses have deep pockets, and managed switches are no longer simple commodities because comparing the advanced feature set and software is no longer trivial. Professional managed switches can cost thousands.

Only recently have we seen pro-sumer switches occupy the space in between these two options by offering some managed features (VLANs) while reserving necessary enterprise features (port security, DHCP snooping, reporting) to segment the market. I bought one for $25 the other day which is almost the same as an unmanaged switch. I would no longer recommend buying an unmanaged switch to anyone with even a passing interest in home networking.

Unmanaged switches just do their thing, managed switches let you tell them what that thing is.

Unmanaged switches don't care about VLAN tags, spanning trees, management interfaces, or LACP.

Managed switches care about at least some of those features and therefore will have a management interface to configure them, as well as firmware supporting them.

A dumb/unmanaged switch will look up the MAC address of the intended recipient and map that to a port before forwarding a packet to a particular port. A managed switch might do a lot more.

If you don't need a managed switch, don't buy one. If you're OK with everything on one port being able to communicate with anything on another port, and connectivity is your only concern, you're probably going to be fine with an unmanaged switch.

Source: I manage (amongst other things) managed switches for a living.

Unmanaged switches are extremely dumb. They do simple things, and do them well.

Managed switches have lots of other shiny features, which is why they are more expensive. They also have to be configured to enable those features, which means you have to know how to drive them

Why are they so much more expensive..

Because people will pay that much for those features. You can find managed switches for $60 pretty easily. Until you get into the 48port blades they don’t change a whole lot, so the higher prices are typically from different ways to trick you into paying more.

Some features like line rate, buffers, do add to the cost though.

you can web into a managed switch