Affordable managed switch becomes home network backbone

A $25 managed switch, initially intended as a temporary solution, has become the essential backbone of a home network. The switch's VLAN support allows for network segmentation, separating lab traffic from trusted devices and enhancing security. Features like port mirroring and cable diagnostics also proved unexpectedly valuable. Despite its gigabit speed limitation, which now bottlenecks faster devices, the affordable switch provided crucial management capabilities that a basic unmanaged switch would lack.