How to judge whether a vswitch is good or bad

Generally speaking, judging whether a vswitch is good or bad involves three aspects: overall architecture, functions, and functions. The overall architecture refers to the value of basic function parameters such as the port density, the maximum speed supported by the port, and the switching capacity of the switch device. This allows you to master the overall positioning and layer of the device.

In addition to the basic specification recommended by RFC2544, the function of the switch must meet the throughput, latency, and packet loss rate. With the deepening of the addition and use of the user's business, some rated targets are also added, such as the number of MAC addresses, route table capacity (layer-3 Switch), number of ACLs, LSP capacity, and number of supported VPNs. Take the number of MAC addresses as an example. The number of MAC addresses refers to the maximum number of MAC addresses that can be stored in the MAC address table of the vswitch. The more MAC addresses supported, the higher the data forwarding speed.

Function is the most direct goal

About the common access layer switch, simple QoS guarantee, security mechanism, support for network management strategy, spanning tree peace talks and VLAN are essential functions, but if careful analysis, in a simple representation can also be further subdivided for some functions, and these subdivisions are the primary cause of product differences, but also the main way to show the value of the product.

Usage-level QoS Assurance

In order to provide users with greater sensitivity in practice, the QoS strategy of the switch must support priority setting of multiple levels of other data packets, which can identify MAC addresses, VLANs, IP addresses, and ports.

The switch must also have superior congestion control and traffic limit capabilities to support Diffserv Differentiated Services. It can intelligently differentiate different traffic streams based on the source/Target MAC/IP address, meet the needs of timely multimedia use. Some switches on the current market are also known as QoS Assurance, but in fact only support the single-level priority settings, bringing a lot of inconvenience to the user's practical use.

VLAN support

VLAN is a virtual LAN. After dividing the LAN into virtual network vlan cidr blocks, it can strengthen network governance and network security, and control unnecessary data broadcast, in the network, task groups can break the geographic location restrictions in the shared network and divide subnets Based on the governance function. Switches of different manufacturers can support different VLANs, and the number of supported VLANs is also different.

Network management functions

Through the network management function, management software can be used to manage and equip switches, for example, through Web reader, Telnet, SNMP, RMON and other management. Whenever, switch manufacturers supply governance software or third-party governance software long-distance management switch.

Common switches meet the computing and governance functions of SNMPMIBI and MIBII, and support strategies such as equipment governance, service quality governance, and alert management, the complex Gigabit Communication timing is added with the built-in RMON group (mini-RMON) to support the automatic maintenance function of RMON.

Link Aggregation

Link aggregation can make the link bandwidth between vswitches and the server very scalable. For example, two, three, and four Gigabit Links can be bound together, multiply the bandwidth of the link.

Link aggregation can achieve load balancing of different ports, but also backup each other to ensure link redundancy. In some Gigabit Ethernet switches, a maximum of four link aggregation groups are supported, and each group has a maximum of four ports. Generate tree peace talks and link aggregation can ensure the redundancy of a network. Redundant links are configured in a network, and the backup link is congested by generating a tree. Logically, the backup link does not constitute a loop. Once a fault occurs, the backup link is enabled.

Support VRRP and peace talks

VRRP (Virtual routing redundancy and peace talks) is a solution to ensure the reliability of the network. During this talk, the ultgateway of the terminal IP device on the shared multi-access media is backed up in redundancy. Then, when one of the three-tier switch devices goes down, the backup device will receive the forwarding task in real time and supply transparent switching to the user, improving the network service quality. VRRP and Cisco's HSRP are similar, but HSRP is private to Cisco.

Currently, mainstream switch manufacturers have supported VRRP talks in their products, but it still takes some time to use them.