In medium to large scales business and corporate LAN environments, the deployment of well managed workgroup LAN Switches with redundant links is very important. The deployment of the legacy Hubs must be avoided. Workgroup LAN Switches greatly improve the throughput of Ethernet networks. They allow the migration to mixed 10/100 Mbps and higher speeds, and greatly reduce the impact of data collisions on the LAN environments.
Modern workgroup LAN Switches are intelligent, they offer numerous performance and management advantages, including the definition of virtual LANs (VLANs) and the ability to perform IP multicast control – a feature that is necessary for video conferencing applications. There are also many LAN Switches that support the ability to perform special link aggregation which can provide additional bandwidth to the LAN when required, and also Ether channel support. An intelligent switch should also allow for flexibility in the configuration of advanced features using a command line console, Telnet and SNMP.
In reference to OSI reference model, workgroup LAN Switches operate in data-link layer that allow Ethernet bandwidth to be used more efficiently. They localize the impact of contention and data collisions on the network by dynamically learning the MAC addresses of devices on the LAN, then only forwarding the required datagram to the appropriate receiving devices.
In complicated redundant link environments, spanning tree protocol must be enabled. And for the security reasons that you need to segment the LANs into multiple segments, the VLAN features of the workgroup LAN Switches will help. VLANs allow the network to be easily segmented for management and/or security reasons. They also allow the flexibility for high density LAN’s to be built using the same switched hardware. Multiple switches can also be interconnected by using a VLAN trunking protocol to transparently connect VLANs. See also Layer 3 Switching for inter-VLAN communications.
Inter-switch bandwidth can be increased by utilizing Fast or Gigabit Ether Channel (FEC/GEC) technologies between network devices. This allows multiple point-to-point links to be aggregated together to provide large scalable pipes up to 800 Mbps (FEC) and 8 Gbps (GEC). For the Switches that have in-line power support, the Voice over IP (VoIP) telephony handset can be supported.
The following is the best practice – the recommendation functional requirements of any basic Ethernet LAN Switches:
- Provide 100 Mbps switched connectivity to the desktop
- Provide 1000 Mbps to servers and inter-switch links (uplinks).
- Support Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) – the IEEE 802.1d standards
- Support Virtual LAN’s (VLANs).
- Support the spanning (Trunking) of VLANs across multiple switches
- Support link aggregation (Ether Channel) technologies.
- Support tuning the STP protocol on a per VLAN basis.
- Provide IP multicast support (i.e. CGMP and IGMP Snooping).
Reference: http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/ and http://www.Cisco.com/
Cisco WebView Manage LAN Switch Series
The following is an example of LAN Switch Cisco SRW2048 48-port Gigabit Switch – WebView. The SRW2048 Cisco WebView Managed switch allows you to expand your network securely. Configuration of the switch is secured using SSL for Web access and SSH for Telnet access. User control is secured using 802.1x security using a RADIUS authentication mechanism and can also be controlled using MAC filtering. Extensive QoS feature makes the solution ideal for real-time applications like Voice and Video.
The 4 priority queues together with the Weighted Round Robin and Strict Priority scheduling techniques facilitate efficient co-existence of real-time traffic with data traffic allowing them each to meet their QoS needs. Individual users or applications can be prioritized above others using various Class of Service options – by port, layer 2 priority (802.1p), Layer 3 priority (TOS or DSCP), or IPv6 Traffic Class.
See also:
- Local area network topologies
- Network Quality of Service
- Computer networking hardware
- D-Link routers
Recent Comments