A switch is a network communication device that is used to send and receive the data over the LAN and WAN. In Ethernet a switch is considered as a best replacement to the hub as it does not broadcast the data like in the hub. A switch is an intelligent device and it maintains a switching table that contains the information of the MAC address and IP addresses of all the computers in a network.
A switch comes in different ports like 6, 8, 16, 24 and uplink ports, which are used to connect to other switches in the network. Switch is very important device in the WAN communications too.
Advance switches are used in the telecommunication networks, ISPs and corporate networks. A LAN or WAN switch routes the data packets based on the MAC and IP address of the data. There are different vendors of the switches and Cisco is the biggest manufacturer and provider of the routers and switches. Other manufacturers include Juniper, Jupiter, D-Link, Linksys and Baynet etc.
To make a switched network make sure that all the switches and other network communication devices are compatible with each other.
It is recommended that purchase all the devices from the same vendor to avoid any incompatibility issues. A switch plays an important role in the network communications. It operates at the Data link layer of the OSI layers model.
A typical Switch supports 10 Mbps to 10/100, 1000 and 10,000 Mbps data transmission speed. Network switches can be connected with each other which allows the more computers and devices to join the same network. A typical switch provides the following features.
- MAC address filtering.
- Turn on and off ports.
- Port mirroring
- Duplex settings
- Use of the Spanning Tree Protocol
Advanced switches can be configured according to your requirements.
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