Layer 3 switches are increasingly mature and widely used. To a certain extent, it has more advantages than routers, but there are still significant differences between Layer 3 switches and routers, and in LANs, Layer 3 switches have obvious advantages.
1.The Transmission Bandwidth Between Subnets Can Be Allocated Arbitrarily
In traditional routers, each serial port can be connected to a subnet, and the rate of such subnets transmitted through the router is directly limited by the bandwidth of the interface. Unlike Layer 3 switches, which define multiple ports as a virtual network (VLAN), a virtual network consisting of multiple ports is used as a virtual network interface, and the information in it is sent to the Layer 3 switch through the ports that make up the virtual network, and since any number of ports can be specified, the transmission bandwidth between subnets is not limited.
2. Rational Allocation of Information Resources
Since there is no difference between the resource rate of accessing the subnet and accessing the global network for a network system connected by a Layer 3 switch, there is little point in setting up a separate server. By directly setting up a server cluster in the global network, it can save cost and make full use of the advantages of the hardware and software resources of the cluster server, and more reasonably configure and manage various information resources, while ensuring the transmission rate of broadband Intranet. This problem is difficult to solve in router networking.
3. Reducing Costs
In enterprise network design, people usually use only two-layer switches to form the same broadcast domain subnet and connect each subnet through routers, which makes the enterprise network form an intranet, and the routers are expensive, so the enterprise network supporting intranet cannot reduce the equipment cost. Now, in the intranet system, people use layer 3 switches for network design, which not only can make arbitrary subnet division for virtual subnets, but also can complete the communication between subnets through the three-layer routing function of switches, i.e., the establishment of subnets and intranets can be done through switches, which greatly saves the expensive routers.
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