I'm currently looking at two different switches. The GS108Ev3 plus switch and the GS308T Smart Switch. It appears that both do link aggregation but I can't seem to see what the difference is between a "smart switch" and a "plus switch" other than the price. I do want to manage my own switch so I don't want something that is unmanaged and I think a fully managed switch might be more than I really need.
Here's a little more story for those that are interested.
Back when I had windows 10 I was able to aggregate my intel and my realtek nic's so they balanced downloads and uploads between them as if they were a single connection. While I don't have the full bandwidth from my service provider, I did note faster download speeds from varied websites. My guess is that I was able to simultaneously download from sites that may have speed caps on each connection. So the website saw two connections and doubled the amount of bandwidth I was able to get from them. I also saw more stability and lower latency when gaming but that might be something else going on there. In the end, I decided I liked the way it worked. With the introduction of windows 11, all tools and abilities to aggregate or balance load across multiple connections went away. I figured a switch would do a better job anyway and it would give me more freedom to play around with switches and learn more.
The GS108Ev3 is built on a configurable non-managed switch core, offering static LAG only, while the GS308T is built on a smarter switch core offering static LAG as well as dynamic LACP LAG.
I think that buying a managed switch is a very good idea, but I do not think that it will help you with your current load balancing dilemma. The link aggregation support in switches is a totally different beast that the network teaming you have used in Windows 10. That network teaming was using one of the adaptive load balancing methods that did not require any support from routers/switches. The link aggregation offered by switches is designed on the other hand to work with other switches, routers or servers that support the same kind of link aggregation.
BTW, it’s worth to buy a better switch since, once you start using it, it become the core device of your network and makes it possible to build even a better network. And, the GS308T is still far from a fully managed switch.
