Scalable and high-density switches comparison

At present, there are two ways to increase the density of the switch port in the local area network : One is to use the chassis switch, support multiple module slots, by adding modules, you can meet different port density requirements; the other is to stack the switches with a tiered switch, And through a single IP address, the entire tiered switch for integrated management, the general number of stacks is 2~4.

The same feature of a scalable switch and a high-density switch is that it simplifies network construction, provides rich port connectivity, and facilitates large network layouts with high port density requirements. And their main difference is:

Cost-scalable switch costs are low, high-density switches of the same port number are significantly higher than the price of tiered switches.

Flexibility and investment protection any one network may face to expand, if the use of high-density switches, if you want to consider future expansion, will cause the current resources idle and waste. If you purchase the switch later, you need to use a cascade switch or hub to increase the port, which will affect the user data transfer rate, and is subject to long-distance transmission restrictions, easy to inconvenience or slow and other undesirable consequences. Stackable switches are an effective solution to this dilemma, and are superior to high-density switches for flexibility and investment gains. Users can purchase the switches that meet current performance and port requirements according to their existing needs, and add new switch members to the existing stacked groups as the business increases and technology develops. This not only protects the original investment, but also avoids the waste of resources, and can realize flexible, fast and stable network expansion.

The application and management of high-density switches usually refer to some slot chassis switches, typically located on the network core device and applied to the core layer of the network. Typically, you can insert 4 to 8 or more interface cards, which allow you to flexibly increase the port density through the free combination of these boards. Each board through the high bandwidth backplane connected, generally can achieve line speed Exchange/routing, to provide advanced routing protocols and rich l2~l4 characteristics, the whole switch for a whole, sharing the same settings, software code, processor chips, address table and so on. and tiered switches are generally used for network edge Access layer, the biggest advantage is the ability to provide scalability, easy local management, so that a group of change machines can "simulate" the function of a chassis device, by setting the network part group as a single logical element, can simplify the management of the network.

Failure affects a network device connection that is only local when a tiered switch fails, and when a chassis switch device fails, it affects a large network of users.