[gmcenroe]

Why are you looking for a managed switch? I don't see any possible reason for that. A switch is just a bridge, it moves ethernet packets around and is mostly pretty stupid.

A router is a far more capable device and many routers have built in "switches" on a subset of their ports if you actually need that as opposed to just using a dumb switch or hub for LAN segments.


Unless you have a very large or complicated network, just assume each LAN segment is a local security domain and has total, unfettered access within each.
Your router is what provides a firewall between those segments, for example between a local "secure" segment that you control, and the public internet segment to your ISP. It does that using routing rules, and also with proxies if supported. I think VLANs are mostly a waste of time unless your network is so spread out that you can't physically connect different security domains to different router ports (because that is the only thing they accomplish; they do not provide any packet filtering at all).

I think that you are aware of the difference between a managed vs unmanaged switch. Maybe you thought that I was going to replace the router with a managed switch instead of add it? The router is basically an unmanaged switch limited to 4 wired ports and wireless connections. My router does have one "guest" network, but it only allows a guest to access the internet, not my network. It has no VLAN capability as most commercial routers don't. Running a managed switch with VLAN prevents a malicious device on my network from detecting devices that are isolated thereby providing additional security. It would also provide specific control and configuration options that prevent one device on the VLAN from seeing and communicating with other devices in that VLAN. There are other advantages of running VLANS, too much to write here. Adding layers to a network increases security instead of running everything in one device. Whatever switch I choose, it will also allow me to expand the network in the future to a greater extent than that provided by my router.

Others on this thread don't believe that firewalls on commercial routers are that secure. I am not certain about that. I could add a separate firewall device but that is too expensive and probably is redundant and overkill for me.

Thanks for posting your opinion though.