Switches are network devices that forward frames across a common shared communications media such as copper wires or fiber optic cable. Switches are advanced, multiport bridges that learn all the physical addresses (MAC addresses) of devices attached to the switch and cross reference that list of physical addresses with the physical ports those the devices with those addresses are plugged in to. This table of MAC addresses and ports (sometimes called a MAC or ARP table) allows a switch to forward frames to the correct device without broadcasting an ARP packet to learn a physical address. Switches segment collision domains into an individual links between the switch and a directly attached end station.
Because each device is attached directly to the switch across a full-duplex path, there are no collisions and the device operates at nearly the full data rate of the connected network interface. Note that switches do not reduce logical (network layer) broadcast domains.
SWITCHING CONCEPTS
- Collision Domain
- Broadcast Domain
- Spanning Tree (from bridging section)
SWITCH ARCHITECTURES
Books on Switching
Interconnections (2nd Ed.) -
|
|
Cisco LAN Switching Fundamentals
|
|
Cisco Lan Switching Configuration Handbook -
|
|
JUNOS Enterprise Switching
|