It can connect different types of the networks or the networks of the same type. Advanced switches offer the high speed links which are used to connect the different switches with each other. Switches determine the Ethernet and IP address of the computers and maintain the switching table.
Based on the Ethernet address, they forward the data packets only to the destined computers. Switches save the MAC address of the source and destination computers. Switches come with different ports like 6, 8, 16 and 24 and each port of the switch handle different data capacity separately.
Unlike hubs, switches do not broadcast the data and only send the data to the destined computers. Congestions and over burdened networks can reduce the performance. Network Switches are used to eliminate the congestions in the network. A router is also considered as a best type of network device that sort out and distributes the data packets. There are two main types of the LAN switches.
In the cut through technique, the switch analyzes the destination address before forward the packets to the network segment.
In the store and forward technique, the switch first analyzes the packets before forwarding them.
Another type of the switch is the multi layer switch which is also known as IP switch or routing switch. Multilayer switches are used in the large networks and they use the routing functions. Due to the advanced features of the multilayer switches, they are providing the good replacement of the routers. There are many manufactures of the network switches mainly are Cisco, Nortel, Juniper, D-Link and Baynet.
There are three main types of the Switching technologies in the WAN as mentioned below.
- Circuit Switching Technology
In the circuit switching, caller establishes the connection before making the call. All the network resources are fully allocated during the transmission. The path between the source and destination is determined by the circuit.
- Datagram packet switching
Packet switching is more recent technology. Unlike the circuit switching, it does not require to establish a circuit before sending the data.
- Virtual Circuit Packet Switching Technology
It is the combination of the circuit switching and datagram switching technology to make advantages of both technologies. It uses the traffic engineering features of the circuit switching and resources usage efficiency of the datagram packet switching technology.
Switching technology has always been evolved and a new generation known as optical switches is in place to provide the optimal performance, speed, scalability and efficiency to the networks.