How to quickly identify Gigabit Ethernet Switches

Currently, the mainstream Gigabit Ethernet switches support up to four link aggregation groups and each group has up to four ports. We believe that with the development of the exchange industry, their functions will become more powerful. The best methods to identify the advantages and disadvantages of GE Ethernet switches include: the most direct indicators of functions, application-level QoS Assurance, VLAN support, network management functions, link aggregation, supports VRRP and other six methods to identify vswitches.

With the gradual development of network applications, telecom-grade switches, especially layer-3 switches, have become the focus of competition in today's market. However, how do users discover products that meet the characteristics of their own applications? This not only requires users to start with the traditional switch evaluation indicators, consider the product cost effectiveness, but also pay special attention to whether the product can provide support for some of the latest features with high value-added.

Generally speaking, evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of a Gigabit Ethernet switch should begin with the overall architecture, performance, and functions. The overall architecture refers to the value of basic performance parameters, such as the port density, the maximum rate supported by the port, and the switching capacity of the switch device. This allows you to determine the location and grade of the device.

In addition to the basic RFC2544 standard, throughput, latency, and packet loss rate, the performance of GE Ethernet switches must meet the requirements of the RFC2544 standard, some additional metrics are added, such as the number of MAC addresses, the capacity of the route table (layer-3 Switch), the number of ACLs, the LSP capacity, and the number of VPNs supported. Take the number of MAC addresses as an example. The number of MAC addresses is the maximum number of MAC addresses that can be stored in the MAC address table of the vswitch. The more MAC addresses are supported, the higher the data forwarding rate.

Identify one of the advantages and disadvantages of a vswitch: the most direct function indicator

For general access layer switches, simple QoS Assurance, security mechanisms, support for network management policies, spanning tree protocols, and VLANs are essential functions. However, if you carefully analyze them, some features can be further subdivided under a simple representation, which is the main cause of product Differences and an important way to reflect the added value of products.

Identify vswitch advantages and disadvantages 2: application-level QoS Assurance

In order to provide users with more flexibility in identifying the advantages and disadvantages of a vswitch in practical applications, the QoS policy of the vswitch must support multi-level data packet priority settings, you can set priorities for MAC addresses, VLANs, IP addresses, and ports. At the same time, the switch must have good congestion control and traffic restriction capabilities, support Diffserv Differentiated Services, and be able to intelligently distinguish different application flows based on the source/Target MAC/IP addresses, meet the needs of real-time multimedia applications. Although some vswitches on the market also claim to have QoS guarantee, they only support single-level priority settings, which brings a lot of inconvenience to users' actual applications.

Identify vswitch advantages and disadvantages 3: VLAN support

VLAN is a virtual LAN. By dividing a LAN into virtual network vlan cidr blocks, network management and network security can be enhanced to control unnecessary data broadcast, working Groups in the network can break through the geographic location restrictions in the shared network and divide subnets based on the management function. Vswitches of different manufacturers have different support capabilities for VLANs, and the number of supported VLANs varies.

Identify vswitch advantages and disadvantages 4: Network Management Function

Through the network management function, you can use management software to manage and configure vswitches, such as Web browsers, Telnet, SNMP, and RMON. Generally, vswitch vendors provide management software or third-party management software to remotely manage vswitches. Generally, GE Ethernet switches support SNMPMIBI/MIBII statistical management and support policies such as configuration management, service quality management, and alarm management.

The complex Gigabit Ethernet switches support the active RMON monitoring function by adding the built-in RMON group (mini-RMON. This policy is supported by the ISCOM2826 vswitch. In the SNMP network management mode, RCNVIEW, a comprehensive network management platform of the company, can be managed.

Identify vswitch advantages and disadvantages 5: link Aggregation

Link aggregation makes the link bandwidth between vswitches and servers very scalable. For example, two, three, and four Gigabit Links can be bound together, multiply the bandwidth of the link. Link aggregation technology can achieve load balancing of different ports, and 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. Both the Spanning Tree Protocol and link aggregation can ensure the redundancy of a network. Set redundant links in a network and use the Spanning Tree Protocol to block the backup link. Logically, no loops are formed. In the event of a fault, the backup link is enabled. The three switch devices we recommend this time provide effective support for Link aggregation and Spanning Tree Protocols. GreenNet's TiNetS3526 not only supports binding eight 10/100 Base-T adaptive ports, it also supports aggregation of Gigabit ports.

Identify vswitch advantages and disadvantages 6: Support for VRRP Protocol

VRRP (virtual router redundancy protocol) is a solution to ensure network reliability. In this protocol, the default gateway (DefaultGateway) of the terminal IP device on the shared multi-access media is backed up redundant, so that a layer-3 switch is down.

The backup device takes over the forwarding in a timely manner and provides transparent switching to users, improving the network service quality. VRRP is similar to Cisco's HSRP Protocol, except that HSRP is private to Cisco. Currently, mainstream switch manufacturers have supported VRRP in their products, but it still takes a few days to widely use VRRP.