A Summary of the Development of Switching Technology from Traditional Layer 2 to Layer 7

The rapid development of network technology, Ethernet occupies a dominant position. In order to adapt to the challenges brought by the deepening of network applications, the scale and speed of the network are developing rapidly. The speed of the local area network has been increased from the initial 10Mbit / s to 100Mbit / s, and the Gigabit Ethernet technology has also been widely used.

For users, under the premise of reducing costs, ensuring high reliability, high performance, easy maintenance, and easy expansion of the network is closely related to the networking technology used; for equipment manufacturers, ensuring the realization of user network functions On the basis of how to make more considerable profits, the advantages and disadvantages of using networking technology have become a means to increase profits.

In the specific networking process, do you use the traditional mature layer 2 switching technology, or use the layer 3 switching technology with routing function, or use the layer 7 switching technology with high network service level?

Among the trade-offs of these technology choices, what are the advantages and disadvantages of the three technologies: layer 2 switching, layer 3 switching, and layer 7 switching, and what kind of environment are they suitable for?

Traditional Layer 2 switching technology

The layer 2 switching technology can identify the MAC address information in the data frame, forward it according to the MAC address, and record these MAC addresses and corresponding ports in a MAC address table within itself.

Speaking of exchange, in a broad sense, any data forwarding can be called exchange. However, the traditional, narrowly defined Layer 2 switching technology only includes data link layer forwarding.

At present, the layer 2 switching technology is mature. From the hardware point of view, the interface modules of layer 2 switches exchange data through a high-speed backplane / bus (the rate can be up to tens of Gbps). Layer 2 switches generally contain ASICs (ApplicaTIon specific Integrated Circuit) chip, so the forwarding speed can be very fast.

Layer 2 switches are mainly used in small local area networks, and the number of machines is less than two or thirty. Under such a network environment, broadcast packets have little effect. The fast switching function of Layer 2 switches, multiple access ports, and low prices are Small network users provide a complete solution.

In short, the switched local area network technology makes the dedicated bandwidth exclusive to users, greatly improving the efficiency of local area network transmission. It can be said that in the technology of network system integration, the user-oriented layer 2 switching technology has obtained a satisfactory answer.

Layer 3 switching technology with routing function

Layer 3 switching technology is a switching technology that began to appear around 1997, initially to solve the problem of the broadcast domain. After years of development, layer 3 switching technology has become the main force for building multi-service convergence networks.

In a large-scale local area network, in order to reduce the hazards of broadcast storms, the large local area network must be divided into multiple small local area networks according to factors such as function or region, which will inevitably lead to a large amount of mutual access between different subnets, and simply use layer 2 switching Technology, but can not achieve mutual access between subnets.

In order to solve this problem technically, network manufacturers have developed layer 3 switches using layer 3 switching technology, also known as routing switches, which is an intelligent combination of traditional switches and routers.

Simply put, the switching technology that can handle the layer 3 data forwarding of the network is the layer 3 switching technology.

From the hardware point of view, in the layer 3 switch, the layer 3 routing hardware module related to the router is also plugged into the high-speed backplane / bus. In this way, the routing module can exchange data with other modules that need to be routed at high speed, thus breaking the speed limit of the traditional external router interface.

The layer 3 switch is designed for IP, the interface type is simple, it has strong layer 3 packet processing capability, and the price is much lower than the router of the same rate, which is very suitable for large-scale local area networks.

The layer 3 switching technology is quite mature today, and at the same time, the layer 3 switch has never stopped developing. The development of layer 3 switching technology and layer 3 switching equipment will definitely promote the informatization of the entire society at a deeper level and gain an increasingly important position in the entire network.

Layer 7 switching technology with network service function

The layer 7 switching technology unpacks each layer of each data packet layer by layer, and recognizes the information of the application layer to realize the identification of the content.

Full use of bandwidth resources to manage applications and content on the Internet has increasingly become the focus of service providers. How to solve the problem from the transport layer to the application layer, the network technology that specifically manages the transport layer to the application layer becomes very important, which is the most fundamental reason for the development of the current layer 7 switching technology.

Simply put, the switching technology that can handle data forwarding at the network application layer is the layer 7 switching technology. Its main purpose is that in the case of bandwidth applications, below the network layer is no longer the key to the problem, instead it is to improve the level of network services and complete the Internet to intelligent transformation.

Layer 7 switching technology implements all high-level network functions through application layer switches, enabling network managers to better allocate network resources at a lower cost.

From a hardware perspective, the 7-layer switch concentrates all functions on a dedicated special application integrated circuit or ASIC. ASICs are cheaper than traditional router CPUs, and are usually distributed on network ports. They include 50 ASICs in a single device and can support hundreds of interfaces. The new ASIC allows smart switches / routers to forward data at extremely fast speeds on all ports. Layer 7 switching technology can effectively achieve data flow optimization and intelligent load balancing.

In the Internet network, Intranet network and Extranet network, 7-layer switches have great potential to play their ambitions. Such as business-to-consumer e-commerce, online customer support, personnel planning and construction, marketing automation, customer service, firewall load balancing, content filtering and bandwidth management.

Switching technology is evolving in the direction of intelligence, from the initial layer 2 switching to layer 3 switching, and has now evolved to the network layer 7 application layer switching. Its fundamental purpose is to ensure the high reliability, high performance, easy maintenance, and easy expansion of the network under the premise of reducing costs, and finally achieve intelligent management of the network.

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