Network switches
Network switches
There is, but it's not anything you would use in the home. You've got the £1-£15/£20 switches which are 'unmanaged' which means you just plug them in and they work. Then you've got the £40-£200 switches which have their own IP address, and have web pages on you can collect stats back from, to see data usage, troubleshooting etc. Then from say £250 up to £600 they get cleverer, you can split the switch down into multiple logical networks, control traffic routing between them, join multiple ports together for redundancy & data throughput. Upwards from that price bracket switches tend to become modular, so you can fit multiple power supplies, change out copper networking (that you'd use in your house) for fibre network interfaces (for long range or inter-building links). Then there's features like Power Over Ethernet for running embedded IP devices which don't have separate power supplies (IP Telephones, Cameras, Wireless Access Points etc).
Like I said, not stuff you'd use
Cool, unmanaged is the way I want to go, just want to plug it in and for it to work!