Smart, Managed and Unmanaged Switches

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Posted by Netgear just a little bit ago. Was on a thread that was not about switches and was asked not to continue the conversation but it was handy getting the Netgear networking team's definition on these so including them here:

Unmanaged - obvious

Smart - managed by a webGUI interface only

Fully Managed - managed by a webGUI and also has a console port to manage via CLI/Telnet/SSH etc.

Smart switches offer a lot of the same capabilities as the higher end Fully Managed however less of those same features (like VLANs) and less granular (like QoS). Further Smart are designed for SMB network or perhaps the edge of larger network but are never to be used at the core of larger networks. Their chipsets are not as capable as the higher end Fully Managed switches and also typically don't offer redundant power supplies (important at the core).