| Your typical unmanaged switch is a device you most likely will encounter all of the freakin' place. The reason why is because their installations are not just limited to business networks, where they were usually used as a stopgap in an office without enough ethernet ports. But in homes they were also used either to share multiple devices off of a router that only has one port, or to control multiple devices including and up to the IoT application (Internt of Things). The primary, and most important distinction, is that it's just a "plug and play" device. You plug computers in it, and they connect to the network, and it has some minor routing abilities and what have you, but nothing that a user should be concerned with, or even an admin. It just works. You plug in some ethernet devices, and it just works.
| A MANAGED SWITCH - ie like the CIsco Catalyst above, is more aimed at businesses and large enterprises. You might find some outside that realm in the form of surplus, or recycled equipment, such as that you can buy at a place like RE-PC in Seattle, but most of the time, these are the magical devices that are doing the multiple connections to all the drops in your average workplace. As such, the switch runs on it's own internal operating system that allows the Network Administrator (or other Admins) to control things like the Virtual LANs (VLANS), security policies, port settings.... These switches can function standalone, or as a part of a larger "stack" of switches, which if you've ever watched your local I.T. Department, you've probably heard people ask "Switch/Blade/Port?" - that's because they have a master control switch controlling multiple switches or "blades" off the master controller, as the part of a larger switch So why would someone want to use one of these in a home scenario? Well, if you're like me, you might find some of the administration features useful whether that's siloing off a VLAN for security reasons (ie Vintage PCs), or in my case, just learning how the darned things work to further your professional career (another part of my use case).
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So this repurposed switch, the first thing you need to do is connect to it via console. This is done using a "console cable", which in the case of Cisco comes in 2 varieties, a USB version for modern PC's, or what I used here, a VINTAGE version (which I bought on E-bay for $7), that usses the classic DB-9 Serial Port. I did all configuration on the Switch from inside Microsoft Windows For Workgroups 3.11 using the Terminal Emulator. The DB-9 end connects to your PC, the RJ45 (ethernet jack style) end attaches to your switch where it's labeled "Console" in the back.
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