up front -- definitely NOT a mission-critical kind of question.

after a 'spring cleaning' of my local office, i've ended up with two 'spare' GigE switches at my home/office -- one managed, capable of VLANs, QoS, etc, and the other unmanaged.

i've got more ports than i need. in fact EACH switch has more total ports than i need.

but, since i can't have these just sitting around not doing SOMETHING ... ;-)

i'm interested in ideas for best combined use of these switches.

my local topology is simple:

[ net ] -- [ adsl2 modem ] -- [linux firewall/router/DNS ]
                            _______________|
                            |
                 [ some arrangement of the 2 GigE switches ]
                            |
               ( ... stuff on the lan ... )
[WAP1]

[voip ATA]  [printer]  [desktop1]  [mail server]  [Xen server
                       [desktop2]                  ( mostly dev,
                       [desktop3]                   + file server
                       [desktop4]                   + media server)]

the MailServer is a production mail server the XenServer serves some low vol to the 'net; the MediaServer guest serves ONLY to the LAN

is there, e.g., any performance value in segmenting off any of the LAN using the managed switch (VLAN? QoS tagging? something?), feeding the rest into the connected unmanaged switch?

or should i simply use one of the switches & be done with it, and use the other for a coffee-cup stand?