Managed, unmanaged, could managed, smart managed Switches

[keeran]

There are fully Manage, could managed, smart managed, web managed & unmanaged Switches. What are the difference between them ? Does all of them support VLANs ? 

I thought unmanaged switches doesn't support VLANs. But the TL-SG105E does, even if it is an unmanaged switch

[Joseph W. Doherty]

Hmm, well for starters, TP-Link's web site has "Intelligent management via a web user interface and downloadable utility", so unclear why you list the switch as "unmanaged", unless that's because you can just plug into devices, using the switch, w/o any initial manual configuration?

Generally, an "unmanaged" switch would be one that there's no way to "interact" with the switch.  If that's the case, the switch could not effectively support VLANs because you would have no way to specify what port should belong to what VLAN and/or what port might be (Cisco like) trunk port.

Once you can manage (or configure) a switch, what options/features it supports/provides and "how" you interact with the switch (e.g. command line and/or web interface) often can vary much between switches.

Since a switch's feature can vary, it can mean that a particular "managed" switch does NOT support VLANs.

[Leo Laohoo]

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@keeran wrote:

I thought unmanaged switches doesn't support VLANs.

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Yes, they do.  VLAN 1.

[Joseph W. Doherty]

"Yes, they do. VLAN 1."

Laugh, @Leo Laohoo this creates a bit of a philosophical discussion.

A non-managed switch doesn't have a VLAN 1, it just has a single L2 domain, that can create a single LAN.  I.e. what you had before there were virtual LANs (VLANs).

By default, if you want to connect a non-managed switch to a managed switch, which supports VLANs (there were probably managed switches before any supported VLANs [remember there were managed hubs]), you could connect it to an access port and "extend" whatever VLAN that access port is configured for.  Or, if connected to a Cisco trunk port, the non-VLAN switch could interact with whatever VLAN, on the trunk, was configured as the "native" VLAN.