What is the difference between a switch and a router

Often have friends to consult the most fire software station small series, about the difference between switches and routers, in fact, if you have used the switch and router friends should be aware of, for everyone, switches and routers in the use of the biggest difference is that the router can achieve dial-up Internet, and then through sharing to many computers at the same time online, But the switch does not have the dialing function inside, but the function of the switch is to shunt the network signal to realize more computer connection to share the Internet.

Introduced here may not be very familiar with the switch, so to speak, we know that a router has 5 ports, one of which is a WAN port, and the broadband cable connection, the other four ports are used to connect the Internet computer (wireless router transmission distance is how far), That is to say, a router can support up to 4 computers to share the Internet, so what should we do if we want to achieve more computer sharing? Then we need to use the switch, the switch is different from the router, the switch generally has at least 8 ports, All we need to do is connect one of the 1-4 ports in the router to any port on the switch, and other ports on the switch can connect to many computers to achieve the Internet, so a network cable through the router combined with the switch can be far more than 4 people sharing the Internet, The role of the switch here is equivalent to adding a network cable port, which can be understood as a diversion, a variable n port.

The difference between a switch and a router

The above author is in order to be able to understand the difference between switch and router more simply and adopt popular discourse introduction, below we take a look in the network, switch and router professional terminology introduces the difference is how to define:

The difference between a switch and a router

Computer networks are often connected by a number of different types of network interconnections. If several computer networks are physically connected and cannot communicate with each other, then this "interconnection" has little practical meaning. As a result, when it comes to "interconnection", it has been suggested that these interconnected computers are capable of communicating, that is to say, functionally and logically, these computer networks have already formed a large computer network, or Internet, or, for the short term, a network, an interconnection.

Connecting networks to each other uses intermediate devices (or intermediate systems), and ISO terminology is called a relay (relay) system. Depending on the level of the relay system, you can have the following five relay systems:

⒈) The physical layer (i.e. the first layer, the layer L1) relay system, that is, the transponder (repeater).

⒉) Data link layer (i.e. second layer, layer L2), i.e. bridge or bridge.

⒊) network layer (third layer, layer L3) relay system, that is, router (router).

⒋) bridge and router mixture bridges (brouter) have the function of bridge and router.

⒌ the relay system above the network layer, that is, the gateway.

When a relay system is a forwarder, it is generally not called a network interconnect, because it is simply a network extension, and this is still a network. High-level gateways are less used because they are more complex. Therefore, the general discussion of network interconnection refers to the use of switches and routers to interconnect the network.

You may think so, switches can connect more than one computer, and switch interconnection of the computer itself has the ability to communicate with each other, formed into an internal LAN, but need to access the Internet also need to have network support, so the switch end need to connect to the router, the router can realize the switching function, but also dial-up, Achieve a broadband connection, and the use of broadband resources allocated to the switch, so that more than one computer sharing the Internet.

To sum up, the router has the routing function, has the network relay system, but also has the Exchange function, the router in addition to the WAN port, the other four ports are equivalent to the Exchange port, the router is used for the connection between the Wan-wan, may solve the opposite sex network forwarding grouping, uses in the network layer and switches are generally used for lan-wan connections, the switch to the Network Bridge, is the data link layer of equipment, some switches can also achieve the third layer of exchange. The router is better than the switch, but the price is relatively expensive and the speed is no faster than the switch.

The above is only a few of the switches and routers we commonly use, for some of the high-end enterprise-class products, especially the third-tier switch and router features more than the above introduction.