Practices Switch Access

Yes, my job entitles me to know just the basics of a switch (enabling ports, and showing ports, configuring vlans) but the training at work sucks to death, but I would like to get familiar with it on my own. Is it possible to just by a switch from like say ebay, and hook it up to my laptop and learn like that? Or do I actually have to set it up on a network to show ports, and things of that nature? Just trying to get a feel, so I can get access to the switch at work but have to prove i can do those things aboe, not really trying to configure whole networks.

thanks.

You are already doing everything that you can do with your basic layer 2 switch. Unless you have a layer 3 switch, turning up ports, and configuring vlans is all you can do with a switch.