Explore the main differences and connections between vrouters and vswitches

I have learned some common knowledge about routers and switches, so I have studied the main differences and connections between routers and switches. I would like to share with you here, hoping to help you. A computer network is often composed of many different types of network connections. If several computer networks are physically connected together.

They cannot communicate with each other, so this "interconnection" does not have any practical significance. Therefore, when talking about "interconnection", it is suggested that these computers can communicate with each other. That is to say, in terms of functions and logic, these computer networks have formed a large computer network, or an interconnected network, or Internet. Some intermediate devices or systems are used to connect networks. ISO is called relay. Based on the level of the relay system, there can be the following five relay systems:

1. The physical layer is often referred to as the first layer and layer L1) repeater system ).

2. data link layer (Layer 2), that is, bridge or bridge ).

3. Layer 3, layer L3) relay system, that is, router ).

4. A mixture of bridges and routers. The bridge router has the functions of bridges and routers.

5. The relay system above the network layer, that is, the gateway ).

When the relay system is a forwarder, it is generally not called network interconnection, because it only expands a network, and it is still a network. High-level gateways are rarely used due to their complexity. Therefore, network interconnection generally refers to the network in which vswitches and vrouters are interconnected. This article describes the differences between vswitches and vrouters.

Vswitches and vrouters

"Exchange" is the most frequently used word on the network today. It can be applied on any occasions from the bridge to the ATM to the telephone system. It is hard to figure out what is the real exchange. In fact, the word exchange first appeared in the telephone system, specifically to achieve the exchange of voice signals between two different telephones, the device to complete this work is the telephone switch. Therefore, in terms of intention, exchange is only a technical concept, that is, to complete the forwarding of signals from the device entry to the exit. Therefore, any device that complies with this definition can be called an exchange device. It can be seen that "Exchange" is a widely used term. When it is used to describe the second layer of the data network, it actually refers to a bridge device; when it is used to describe the third-layer device of the data network, it also refers to a routing device. We often mention that an Ethernet switch is actually a multi-port L2 network device based on the bridge technology, it provides low-latency and Low-overhead channels for data frame forwarding from one port to another.

It can be seen that the core of the switch should have an exchange matrix to provide a channel for communication between any two ports, or a fast exchange bus, to send data frames received by any port from other ports. In actual devices, the function of the switching matrix is usually completed by a dedicated chip ASIC. In addition, there is an important assumption in the design philosophy of the Ethernet switch, that is, the speed of the switching core is very fast, so that the normal large-volume data will not cause congestion. In other words, the exchange capability is infinite relative to the information transmitted. In contrast, the design of the ATM switch is that the exchange capability is limited compared with the Information transmitted ). Although the second layer Ethernet switch is developed based on a multi-port bridge, after all, the switch has more features, making it the best way to get more bandwidth, it also makes the network easier to manage.