Are you in the greater Reno, NV area and...
At ITISRENO, We have standardized on Gigabit Managed Switches.
Switches come in a variety of sizes, from 4 port(you can connect 4 devices) up to 48 port(you can connect 48 devices), and even larger with enterprise level switches. When it comes to the speed of the switch, most switches today run at 1-gigabit, while older switches run at 10/100-megabit (1-gigabit is appx. 1000 megabits). Some switches run even faster, at 2.5-gigabit, 5-gigabit, 10-gigabit, 40-gigabit, etc. It is also common for switches to have a few ports that run faster than most ports, ie. you can have a 24-port 1-gigabit switch, which has (24) 1-gigabit ports for devices, but it may also have 4 more ports to the right that all run at 10-gigabit. These ports are usually used for connecting to other network switches or routers/firewalls. If you are needing assistance with your network switch(es), please and we can gladly help.
You may have heard the terms un-managed switch and managed switch. The switches you get at Best Buy or Walmart are consumer type switches, almost always an un-managed switch. These types of switches have limited abilities for security, control and monitoring. Managed switch are more commercial based switches, which add a lot of capabilities for more security, more control, and more monitoring and reporting. This day is age, for your business, it is recommended to only have managed switches. If you need help identifying the types of switches you have for your business, please now to schedule an appointment.
POE, or Power Over Ethernet, is a system designed to power network devices through the switch, which means the devices don't need their own power supply. Most Wireless Access Points, IP telephones and IP cameras use POE for their power source. One of the biggest advantages to this is putting a UPS(Battery Backup) on your switch, which means in a power outage, your phones/cameras/etc. stay on(as long as the UPS has power in it's batteries). There are so many advantages to moving your devices to a POE setup, if you would like to learn more, please with any questions you may have.
