It operates at the data link layer of the OSI model and it is used for the data communication and routing the packets in the network. A switch is like a hub and unlike hub it does not broadcast the data to all the computers in a network. A switch is an intelligent device like a router and it maintains a switching table that is based on the IP and MAC addresses of the LAN/WAN computers. Based on the source and destination IP addresses of the packets, a switch forwards the packets to its destination.
Ethernet switch stores the data packets and based on the source and destination IP addresses of the packets, it transfers the packets towards its destination. Switching table maps the Ethernet address and the switching ports through which the communication of these packets takes places. The implementation of the network switches is very common in the Ethernet. Ethernet switches supports 10 mbps to 100 mbps Ethernet standards. Splitting and forwarding the data packets splits the network into the collision domains and each network segments acts as an independent collision domain.
Different types of switches are used to connect different networks such as Ethernet and Fast Ethernet. To avoid the network congestion and to improve the performance it is recommended to add more switched ports in a network. A switch can connect a fast Ethernet to the existing Ethernet infrastructure to increase the speed and performance.
In the data communication networks, the combination of the Cisco Router and EtherSwitch modules increase the performance and bandwidth of the voice, video communications and the IP networks. The Cisco’s EtherSwitch module provides easy configurations, deployment and management in a single platform.
The key features of the EtherSwitch module includes Port auto sending, Qos, VLAN support and 802.1D spanning tree protocol. Adding the more switches in a non congested network can actually degrade the performance by delaying the network response time, packet switching delays, switch buffer delays and retransmission of the packets.
By using the appropriate network monitoring and troubleshooting tools, the better network performance can be achieved by load balancing, bandwidth monitoring, resources allocation, packet filtering and protocol analyzing. The combination of the fast Ethernet and the switched network overcome the bottleneck problem in the slow networks.
The most common switching features include the following.
Port Mirroring
- Turn the ports on and off
- Priority settings for Ports
- Link speed
- Duplexing
- MAC address filtering
- Use of Spanning Tree Protocol
- VLAN
- Network Address Control 802.1X