A network switch (also called switching hub, bridging hub, officially MAC bridge is a computer networking device that connects devices together on a computer network, by using packet switching to receive, process and forward data to the destination device. Unlike less advanced network hubs, a network switch forwards data only to one or multiple devices that need to receive it, rather than broadcasting the same data out of each of its ports. A network switch is a multiport network bridge that uses hardware addresses to process and forward data at the data (layer 2) of the OSI model. Switches can also process data at the network layer (layer 3) by additionally incorporating routing functionality that most commonly uses IP addresses to perform packet forwarding; such switches are commonly known as layer-3 switches or multilayer. Beside most commonly used Ethernet switches, they exist for various types of networks, including Fibre Channel, Asynchronous Transfer Mode, and Infini Band.

HOW CAN VDS HELP?

At Vector Digital Systems, the Network engineers are skilled, experienced and talented to design a network solution that is needed in any organization for a simple network structure or complex multi-layer networking. Adding a switch for the first time has different implications than increasing the number of switched ports already installed. Understanding traffic patterns is very important to network switching – the goal being to eliminate (or filter) as much traffic as possible. A switch installed in a location where it forwards almost all the traffic it receives will help much less than one that filters most of the traffic.