Three key elements for the future development of Ethernet switches

The internet has grown rapidly with e-mail and www Two free services, prompting rapid growth of Ethernet. Now more and more manufacturers to enter the Ethernet market, new brands and new products continue to emerge, it seems that there has been a trend of homogenization of competition. However, the expansion of the Ethernet switch in the market at the same time, the product quality requirements are also constantly improving. At present, the development of Ethernet switch products is going along the three development directions of speed, intelligent application and expanding, whether it is used in the high-end module chassis switch or the fixed port switch used in low-end, it has complied with this trend.

Speed: Key indicators of network performance

The network speed from hundred megabytes/gigabit to Gigabit/Wan Shao is an important milestone in the development of Ethernet in the 30. The advent of the era of mega-networks will bring a completely unimaginable new experience to people. At present, people's demand for bandwidth is rapidly increasing, such as the rapid development of the storage network mass data transmission channel, a large number of mega-bandwidth convergence of the metropolitan Area Network, large financial institutions of data concentration, enterprise core business, ERP, CRM and other complex application extensions. Today gigabit as the backbone, hundred trillion for access to the mainstream structure, will gradually to the million trillion backbone, gigabit access to the structure of the transition. The new generation of Cisco Switch products Catalyst 6500 and 3750 series are typical of a new generation of gigabit/gigabit switches, and their presence in the marketplace provides excellent product coverage for both gigabit core and gigabit to desktop, as well as the possibility of continuing to upgrade the network in the future.

Smart: Simplifying Networks

The web is changing the way we learn, live and work, and today's network needs more intelligent applications to support people's many needs. From the initial email transceiver, developed to the current data, voice, video multimedia transmission, network technicians with the implementation of QoS, to help the network to achieve a complex application of the smooth and rapid operation, and continuously research and development of the switch to the innovative intelligent service support. At present, after the implementation of the technology of switch and the security exchange, the voice support becomes another development direction. The Intelligent Voice Service of Ethernet switch can integrate data and voice transmission, the customer only need to maintain a set of unified network system, save the network management cost greatly. The Voice service on Ethernet can not only guarantee excellent call quality, but also be rich in value-added application development. such as: No need to repeat the IP phone number, powerful IP conferencing, easy-to-use wireless IP phone and IP soft phone. IP Voice applications on Ethernet will further bring people from traditional call mode to the era of IP communication. In order to support IP communication, the online power supply capability is especially important for Ethernet switch, in addition to implementing the maximum QoS for effective network bandwidth application and ensuring the security of network security Exchange technology. In addition, as some switches begin to connect directly to the WAN, more and more switches have some routing capabilities, and given the next generation of Internet Protocol IPv6 in the future large-scale applications, Cisco's new generation of switches to IPV6 hardware support.

Expansion: The Internet is everywhere

Ethernet is expanding its coverage and is developing in the direction of wireless and long-distance. Wireless Ethernet can meet the needs of people to access the Internet anytime, anywhere, the world is set off a wireless LAN construction climax. Wireless Ethernet technology in the coverage of the space has been greatly expanded, is currently the hottest technology. Background network technology and complete infrastructure support is the basis of wireless application development, complete Ethernet architecture to ensure the expansion of wireless network space and wireless network of a variety of intelligent applications to play the perfect. Some of the most technologically powerful companies, such as Cisco, to provide users with a comprehensive wireless network solution, the wireless network positioning in the group users of the application, user-friendly office and use, in the wired network system based on the establishment of a wireless network, so that wired and wireless complementary to each other, so that the two formed a good integration and unity. In addition, Cisco's long-distance Ethernet solution extends Ethernet over a distance. This technology is the Ethernet on the telephone line, the VDSL signal is transmitted at the physical layer, and the Ethernet signal is transmitted in the second layer. It can extend the transmission distance, from the original 100 meters to reach the farthest up to 5 kilometers, especially suitable for the metropolitan area, and the speed remains unchanged, any cable can support, greatly facilitate the application.

Modular fixed port switching simultaneously

From an architectural perspective, Ethernet switches can be divided into fixed-port switches and module-chassis switches. The switching ports of the fixed port switch are basically fixed with the switch, and each switch port of the module chassis switch is inserted and modular, and can be added or subtracted according to the need. Usually, the former is mainly used in the low-end application of the network, the latter is mainly used in high-end applications. These two systems of products, will be in the speed, intelligent applications and coverage of the three major areas of development.

Fixed-port switches can extend the capacity by stacking to increase the overall speed of the network, but such stacks should not be physically connected. The traditional stacking style is similar to the hub stack, that is, with a bus in the backplane of the various switches in tandem together, in fact, each switch is also a stand-alone operation, fragmented, simply can not implement a unified flow policy, not only wasted bandwidth, and can not support the integration of a variety of applications. To address these issues, Cisco's next-generation scalable Switch Catalyst 3750 introduces an innovative technology-smart stacking (stackwise), which offers an innovative tiered architecture that provides a 32Gbps tiered interconnect that can stack up to 9 switches, And to enable them to achieve from the physical stack to the logical data flow management and planning of all-round unity. This integrated and optimized device overall allows customers to deploy voice, video, and data applications with greater confidence. This innovative technology can bring many unexpected advantages to customers who can stack switches, such as tiered redundancy, distributed forwarding and quality of service (QoS)-based unified services, simplified management through automatic configuration, and meeting the requirements of Gigabit Ethernet connectivity through advanced failover capabilities based on hardware and software Support for next-generation Internet Protocol IPv6.

The most important development trend for chassis modular switches, which is used for the core of the network, is the fact that the components in the chassis are becoming more and more powerful, and with a more flexible modular structure, it can provide a wide range of functional modules beyond the basic connections. Cisco's new generation of Catalyst 6500 switches, the most introduced purpose is its mega-switching performance, it is equipped with a powerful switching engine and a built-in exchange matrix, and hardware to accelerate the implementation of high-performance embedded network management functions, MPLS, IPV6 and other intelligent services hardware support, Achieve up to 400Mpps performance through distributed forwarding technology. Cisco also developed a number of new functional modules based on the original Catalyst 6500, which are compatible with all existing Catalyst 6500 interfaces and service modules, providing a cost-effective way to migrate to Gigabit Ethernet.

The wheel of technological progress is still rolling forward, speed, intelligence and expansion of the development of three breakthroughs, will make the development of Ethernet switches to a new level.