2 networking questions

1). What kind of messages tend to negate any benefits of a switch on a switched network?

2). What is the rank of the following in terms of speed and why: routers, brouters, and bridges?

I've been unable to locate this information.

hi:)
probable answer to qn 1)
broadcast messages tend to negate the benefits of switches...coz if its a broadcast msg then, all the hosts connected to the switch ports are goin to received de msg, unless VLANs are configured.
if VLANs are configured, broadcast msgs will only traverse the vlan the host is connected to. with broadcast msgs traversing about coz there are no vlans configured, theres bound to be collision of the packts and lost of pkt data. users would need to send the pckt again.

2) for two...i think bridges are the fastest in terms of speed coz they dont check up the ip address....bridges jus broadcast it to everyhting connected to it...its got one broadcast domain.

thanks indebluez for the responses.

I also think bridges are faster since they occur near/next to the hardware layer in the OSI model. The higher up the model you go, the more complicated things get. Since routers utilize the network layer and brouters are a combination of the data link and network layers, both would be relatively slow vs. bridges which fall in the data link layer.

1.Broadcast messages will negate the benefits of a switch as they will be flooded to all ports. The problem would be worse if you had did not use spanning tree protocol to prune redundant links.. the broadcast would keep being rebroadcast resulting in a broadcast storm.

2. Switches are faster than bridges as they are based on ASICs (application specific integrated circuits) whereas bridges are software based. But bridges are faster than routers because routers deal with logical addresses and need to make complex routing decisions.


All the information you want is given in detail under the menu at the top
Networking >> Connectivity.

sahir caught napping :lol:

sahir caught napping :lol:

sahir the comparison was between routers , bridges & brouters and not switches...,hehe

Hehe, so I gave them one extra bit of info
I told them
a. Switches faster than bridges
b. bridges faster than routers


Always a step ahead