You can segment the switch into separate VLANs. So you can tell it that ports 1-8 are on one LAN, and that 9-24 are on another. IIRC, you can define up to 16 VLANs on these switches. And you can VLAN across ganged switches obviously.
A few points:
  1. First, if he isn't familiar with switches, he isn't familiar with VLANs.

    The idea is that a hub or a simple switch connects a series of computers together in one network. Each of those computers can talk directly to each other (at least on the Layer2 level, which, again, is all that a hub/switch deals with). VLANs allow you to separate out ports on your intelligent switch so that ports on VLAN1 can't talk directly to ports on VLAN2. It's as if there were multiple switches, but it's easier to deal with on a large network, as they're dynamically configurable. BTW, VLAN means Virtual LAN.

  2. Second, the ports on a VLAN need not be contiguous. VLAN1 could contain ports 1,5,6,10, and 24 while VLAN2 could contain 2,3,4,7,and 20, for example.

  3. Inter-VLAN routing means that it would turn your switch into a router. Exactly why you'd want to do this is unknown, as, generally, anyone that can afford real switches can afford a real router, and, generally, the software addon cost for the routing module for those switches that can do it costs almost as much as a router, anyway.
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Bitt Faulk