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Print Formattednetworking > technologies > switches

Switches

Switches are very similar to hubs in physical appearance and operation in that they form connection points for many NIC's to cable into. However the switching hub is capable of making many discrete connections between pairs of NIC's that can exchange data through the switch without colliding with data from other communicating pairs of NIC's. It maintains a small database of who is connecting to who and uses this to optimise traffic flow. This helps overcome the main problem with simple hubs where data collisions become a problem with many multiple connections in progress at the same time.

The switch can also provide load balancing between segments of the network so that the different parts of the network are guaranteed some minimum amount of service and some parts of the network do not swamp the system. This can be critical in systems where the connections must be made to alert remote users of emergency situations or provide fail safe monitoring. For example if the Fire Brigade are downloading a huge new map of the city for planning purposes, the network should not totally shut out communications coming from other people notifying them of fires the brigade should be attending to put out!

A switch is a complicated device with many configuration options and is always present as a node in the network and is built with internal management software to allow remote configuration, monitoring and maintenance.

A switch regenerates the timing of the network signals and because this cleans up the signals, switches can be cascaded as many times as required. This makes them ideal for large networks where connection complexity and high bandwidth are found. A switch gives full bandwidth to each user. The switch reads the destination address of each packet and then forwards the packet to the correct port. This is much more efficient than a hub and is these days the preferable solution.

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