Introduction and purchase of Layer 2 smart switches for Mbit/s (1)

Switches are constantly evolving along the speed, multi-layer switching, and intelligent exchange directions. A new trend is that intelligent exchange at the edge access layer drives the development of intelligent exchange from the core of the network to the edge. In the past, the network architecture only adopted layer-3 routes of smart switches and layer-4 to layer-7 Smart switches at the core. On the edge, the network architecture adopted common layer-2 access switch products without any network management. Nowadays, with the development of network technology, especially VOIP and network video, application services are becoming more and more complex, and applications with high bandwidth and high load are becoming more and more complex, the absence of intelligent exchange affects the fast exchange of sensitive and important delayed applications. In addition, the popularization of GB also promotes the development of intelligent network exchange from the core to the edge to a certain extent, so that Intelligent switches are available at the core and edge to form a unified intelligent exchange system.

What is a layer-2 smart switch?

The current layer-2 access switch has evolved to intelligent switching, which includes service quality assurance (QOS) and security policy requirements for specific services.

1) Service Quality

Enterprise Networks transmit several types of traffic, including data, voice, and video. Data communication traffic usually does not have a short delivery period, but the voice and video services are different. For example, a VoIP Phone must pass through the network in real time and arrive within several milliseconds. The challenge is to transmit real-time voice packets and time-sensitive data packets in the same pipeline at the same time. A smart switch can give priority to packets with time as the key factor. Using several queues, the smart switch can move the voice packet to the front of the data packet. In this way, the bandwidth capability is increased so that a network can use more data to intelligently increase the validity of bandwidth usage. Therefore, the most important traffic can be prioritized.

The hybrid transmission of data streams, voice streams, and video streams in the network has a great impact on the network's effective and stable performance, and these applications are initiated on the edge of the network, therefore, L2 switches must be able to differentiate different business flows and assign different bandwidths and forward priorities based on their priorities. Edge smart switches add QoS based on the existing manageable switch technology ). Using a high-performance integrated chip, a layer-2 smart switch can identify and process packet information including layer-2 Data Link MAC), network layer IP (IP), layer-4 Transport Layer TCP/UDP protocol, and port.

• Priority queue. 802.1p priority is an important indicator of L2 smart switches. Each packet passing through the vswitch can be assigned to a queue with a higher priority. Connect an IP phone device or video server to a vswitch to run sensitive latency applications such as video conferencing and video calls on the Internet.

• IP multicast IGMP) listener. This is very good for the exchange of multicast technology, such as deploying Media Servers for enterprises. The switch can listen on IGMPIntenet group management protocol to build an image table and help filter and forward data. The vswitch port can be dynamically configured so that IP multicast data traffic is forwarded only to the ports associated with the multicast host.

2) Security Policy

A security policy is to enable a layer-2 switch to take part in its security responsibilities. It uses a security control mechanism to effectively prevent and control illegal network connections and illegal management of layer-2 switches, provides secure access to the network edge. L2 ~ Based on MAC address, IP address, TCP/UDP port number, and Protocol ~ L4 ACL access control. 802.1x identity Security Authentication effectively controls visitors and prevents unauthorized users from accessing the network. Some vswitches can provide RADIUS servers. Therefore, when connected to a PC, the user name and password must be logged on to the network. Of course, you must set the parameters for 802.1x authentication.

A smart switch with the above features will be a perfect smart switch, but the actual situation is that only a small number of switches reach, most of which only provide the 802.1p priority.

Application Environment of Layer 2 smart Switches

Because L2 smart switches are L2, they can only be deployed on the edge of the local area network to serve as access services for clients. Layer-2 smart switches are used to cope with the complex data, VOIP, video, and other business switching needs of large and medium-sized enterprise networks and to take necessary control over the security of the switching network. Now, some enterprises have begun deploying VOIP phones to implement economic or almost free daily voice communication and deploy IP-based video conferences. These real-time business data requires that the network be "a green light ", this requires the switch to provide port bandwidth traffic control and switch queue priority sorting. In addition, enterprises may need to control access permissions for some important and sensitive subnets, such as the subnets of Financial servers and file servers. Although VLAN subnet division can prevent mutual communication between subnets, however, you cannot guarantee that unauthorized users can access these sensitive servers directly on the subnet switch. For example, user identity confirmation can be provided based on 802.1x identity authentication, and identity authentication is required for access to sensitive subnets.

Six 10-Gigabit L2 smart Switches

The 10/100 Mbit/S layer-2 smart switch supports M Adaptive Fast Ethernet Switching ports. It is mainly designed for deploying Intelligent switching on common network edges and only provides M to the desktop environment, additionally, a m optical/electrical uplink port can be provided to cater to the Gigabit trunk deployment purpose and at least provide the 802.1p priority in terms of intelligence.

1. Asus GigaX1024P smart L2 Switch price: 1830-2800 yuan (figure 1)

Figure 1

Build 24 10/100 and 2 1000Base-T RJ-45 ports in GigaX1024P for easy access to gigabit backbone networks, it also provides automatic rate adjustment, automatic MDI/MDIX switching, and automatic negotiation of full/half duplex transmission mode. In terms of vswitch performance, vswitch provides Gbps full-line rate switching capability, up to mpps of forwarding rate, and 8 k mac address memory capability. Supports 32 port-based VLAN settings.

Main features: supports link aggregation, CoS and QoS priority, broadcast and multicast IGMP Snooping filtering, bandwidth control, each port can be set separately, and history check. You can manually set eight groups of trunks to monitor and manage all the connection ports. To configure GigaX1024P, you must install the Windows-based CNMCentralized Network Management software. No fan design.

Minor Evaluation: The GigaX1024P switch is an ordinary smart type, and the 8 Gbps switch backboard is a general type. It supports service priority, multicast IGMP Snooping, therefore, it can adapt to the service quality control required for multimedia transmission over the network and broadcast storms that may occur during Media Server multicast. GigaX1024P fan-free design, may be using an iron shell body for heat dissipation, quiet operation, one of the characteristics.