Layer 2 Vs Layer 3 Switching

Layer 2 VS Layer 3 Switching

A Layer 2 switch looks at a user’s MAC address which comes with every piece of hardware on your network. It then decides whether to discard or to forward the data to the destinations. In doing this, a bandwidth becomes dedicated to certain users, extraneous traffic is eliminated and network response is improved A Layer3 switch – also called Routing Switch does all this in addition to routing users IP addresses. It adds powerful routing capabilities to your switched Ethernet workjgroup to boost intranet performance and relieve legacy routers from the fast growing IP LAN traffic. Routing switches are much faster than software based routers, as packet are routed by chips, instead of being processed then routed to the ports by the CPU. Why need Layer 3 Switches Broadcast message : when server wanted to know who are connected in network , it send message to all desktop. There are possibility another server send similar message, when two broadcast message collide, the third one has to be wait for 2 power n-1 nanoseconds. IN multi serve application server bound to send broadcast messages, which in turn degrade network performance. Multicast Message: Similarly when server sends some to group of users two messages collide and third one has to wait for 2 power n-1 nano seconds. This is multicast messages and this has to be contained. Inter VLAN communication : Once you configure VLAN in L2 switches, inter communication between is not using L2 switches. Layer 3 switches are required for a. Containing broadcast messages and multicast messages b. To allow Inter communication between different VLANs

Layer3 switch refered to as multilayer switching, LAN switching, routing switching and the switching routers to a class of high performance routers optimized for campus LAN. T Commonly used routing include routing information protocol ( RIP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Interior gateway Routing Protocol(IGRP) and border Gateway Protocol(BGP). Routing protocols transmit information about the network. The most important criteria for the selection of a Layer 3 switch is not raw performance, but is both route processing and intelligent network services. Features like Quality Of Service(QoS), advanced queuing mechanisms, multi –Protocol routing capability, and others are also important in Layer 3 switching products. With intelligent traffic management, they also allow yoy to specify port bandwidth and priority queues for streaming media, Voice over IP and other high priority classes of traffic. Layer 3 Switches support standard- based IP routing. Routing protocols supported include RIP-1 and RIP-2.