Switches

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Switches

Switches are devices that can be configured as bridges or routers and have a far more sophisticated means by which they approach movement of packets on a network. Most readily identified with the star and hybrid star networks, switches are designed to establish virtual circuits between two machines trying to communicate, so that the two machines see the traffic of only one, or at least only a few other, machines.

Switches are primarily designed to reduce the number of machines within a collision domain. A collision domain is the logical grouping of machines that cannot avoid seeing each other’s packets at the network interface layer. Ethernet networks using collision avoidance and detection techniques are designed to efficiently deal with this problem. Remember that the more machines on a particular network segment, the harder it is to communicate.

Repeaters are not useful in restricting collisions because they retransmit everything they see. Bridges are more useful for directed packets, but still must transmit broadcasts. When properly configured, switches can establish point-to-point communications between two machines so that collision avoidance is no longer even necessary. Traffic between two machines will not interfere with other traffic that may be passing through the switch because the switch is sophisticated enough to isolate the traffic being transmitted from one port to another. Naturally, more than one machine can be added to a switch’s port through the use of hubs. Figure 5.6 illustrates how a switch operates.

In this hybrid star configuration, the collision domain includes just the machines attached to that hub, not to any other ports. A full-scale discussion of switches is beyond the scope of this chapter. The important point to take away from this summary on switches is this: Although some switches can be configured to perform standard routing functions, most work at the Network Interface layer where IP is not involved yet. This means that if you have a digitally switched network, you may not need to break down your network IDs with subnet masks. The primary role of switches is to reduce the number of machines in your collision domains, thereby providing more sustained bandwidth to each machine on a network segment.

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