What's the difference between a router and a switch?

On the network for many years, maybe everyone in the Internet, all need switches or routers to help, then you know the difference between the switch and the router? 1min to find out, ^_^.

What are switches and routers, respectively?

★ Switch is a MAC (network card hardware address) identification, for the originator and the receiver to establish a temporary network path.

Switches are divided into two-tier switches, three-tier switches, or higher-level switches. A three-tier switch can have routing capabilities and is faster than a low-end router's forwarding rate.

The main features of the switch are: one route, multiple forwarding.

★ Router (Router) also known as the selector, is the network layer to achieve interconnection equipment. Network devices that can connect multiple networks or network segments, including local and wide area networks.

Routers have two typical functions, namely data channel function and control function.

What are the differences between routers and switches

A. Different levels of work: switches are simpler than routers, and routers can get more information than converters

The initial switch is the data link layer that works in the OSI/RM open architecture, which is the second tier, and the router begins by designing the network layer that works at the OSI model. Since the switch works on the second layer of OSI (data link layer), it works fairly simply, and routers work on the third layer of OSI (the network layer) to get more protocol information, and routers can make more intelligent forwarding decisions.

B. Data forwarding is based on different objects

A switch uses a physical address or a MAC address to determine the destination address of the forwarded data. The router uses the ID number of the different network (that is, the IP address) to determine the address of the data forwarding. IP addresses are implemented in software that describes the network where the devices are located, and sometimes these third-tier addresses are also called Protocol addresses or network addresses. MAC addresses are usually hardware-led, distributed by the manufacturer of the network adapter, and have been cured to the network card, which is generally not to be changed. IP addresses are usually assigned automatically by your network administrator or system.

C. Traditional switches can only divide the conflict domain, can not split the broadcast domain;

The network segments that are connected by the switch still belong to the same broadcast domain, and broadcast packets propagate across all network segments connected to the switch, which in some cases can lead to traffic congestion and security vulnerabilities. The network segments that are connected to the router are assigned to different broadcast domains, and broadcast data does not go through the router. Although the third layer above the switch has VLAN function, can also split broadcast domain, but each sub broadcast domain is unable to communicate the communication, the communication between them still needs the router.

(4) The router provides the service of the firewall

Routers can prevent broadcast storms by forwarding only packets of specific addresses, sending packet transmissions that do not support routing protocols, and sending unknown destination network packets.

The most fundamental difference is that switches are generally used for lan-wan connections, switches to Network Bridge, data link layer devices, and some switches can also be exchanged for the third tier. Routers are used for connections between Wan-wan, which can be used to resolve the forwarding groupings between opposite-sex networks, and to use the network layer.

Comparatively speaking, the function of the router is more powerful than the switch, but the speed is relatively slow and the price is expensive, the third layer switch has the ability of the switch speed forwarding message and the good control function of the router, so it is the ideal choice for everyone.

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