As HP acquires 3Com, the battle to beat Cisco Networks to become the world’s most dominant networking player intensifies. HP has traditionally faced criticism from networking customers due to its inability to provide solutions across the entire network infrastructure however the acquisition of 3Com adds core switching, routing and security products to the HP networking portfolio.
Once a week we get asked by customers about whether they need a managed or unmanaged switch. Basically an unmanaged switch is dumb; it does nothing apart from allowing traffic to pass through your network. With an unmanaged switch, you have no control.
A managed switch allows you to control the network; you can allow ports to pass data to other ports or close them off, it’s up to you. This concept of controlling ports on managed switches is similar to that used on a Firewall.
Network security appliances such as firewalls help fight perimeter security threats but internal networks need protection from encryption.