Switches or network switches are network equipment that allows you to connect other equipment within the LAN.
These are essential parts to interconnect PCs, printers, and any device on a LAN.
But how do network switches work?
How do they share network traffic?
This article explains everything about how these network switches work.
Table of Contents
What is a network switch?
A switch is a network device that takes the form of a bus with different Ethernet ports. The number of ports depends on the size of the switch. There are switches with 8, 12, 24 ports. To connect the devices to the network, they are connected to the switch ports with RJ 45 cables. The Ethernet ports have an indicator light that flashes when network frames pass through.
Network switches can also be interconnected to extend the LAN. Boxes or routers, a large public has several Ethernet ports, so they act as switches. But if you want to connect more devices by cable.
Incorporate networks, wall plugs go to the patch panel, it’s the black box with the plug numbers at the top of the photo below.
Then, we connect these plugs to the switch sockets with RJ45 Cables.
We then talked about mixing the plug, which allows you to plug in a device to connect to the LAN.
Everything is in a patch bay in a network room—air conditioning.
Finally, we also find the data (data center) in a more complex way.
We can manage them remotely through a network interface or SSH.
Manage VLANs, physical StackWise Virtual, VLANs, traffic control using MAC addresses, etc.
Switches – How It Works
How do the switches distribute the network?
How do the devices manage to communicate?
Where its ancestor, the hub, was only capable of replicating network frames.
One network switch works intelligently with MAC addresses to ensure that traffic sent between devices ends up in the right place.
How to find the MAC address and what it is
To do this, it continually monitors the traffic entering the switch from connected devices.
Then learn where the different MAC addresses of those devices are connected.
Do this. It examines the traffic coming from the computers to read the MAC address that is the traffic source.
So when a packet is sent from one device to another.
The network switch knows which physical port to send the frame to.
This saves network bandwidth because the switch only sends the frames to the correct recipient.
Unlike its ancestor, the hub that replicates traffic to all devices (Broadcast).
This we speak of collisions and congestion of the LAN.
Finally, the devices can also send frames to the entire network.
We are talking about messages in the Broadcast that have as destination the MAC address FF: FF: FF: FF: FF: FF.
Here too, the switch knows how to send to all Ethernet ports.
Switch and VLAN
VLANs are used to isolate devices within a local area network (LAN).
They are also used to segment a network.
They function as if they were created using separate switches.
The switch replicates in transmission to segment devices in a VLAN and isolates them.
Each virtual local network has its broadcast domain.
Therefore, the devices communicate only on the defined VLAN.
Finally, it is quite possible to combine several switches in one VLAN meter.
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