If youre familiar with the configuration of a home online grid, youll know the basics of a router.
The router defines the internet and acts as a gateway to other networks.
In a home web link, those other networks are generally the Internet.
That doesnt need to be the case, though.
Youll often find that routers dont have that many ethernet ports.
Many home routers offer at most two, three, or four ports, while some only offer one.
Enterprise-grade routers will always provide more than four ports but dont generally offer dozens of ports.
To get around this, two online grid devices can help.
The first is a internet hub.
This offers a more significant number of ports but forwards any incoming traffic to all other outbound ports.
All devices share bandwidth, which can cause issues, especially in large networks.
The other option is the data pipe switch.
The switch also offers many ports.
This means that the bandwidth to each host is independent of any other host.
web link switches are significantly more popular than hubs because of their better bandwidth capabilities.
Small business/Home Office switches offer four, eight, or twelve ports and usually dont exceed that.
They are small devices designed to sit on top or under a desk, not unlike a router.
Enterprise-class routers are rack mounted like Enterprise routers.
These generally max out at 48 standard ports per 1U switch.
However, these also tend to have a small number of other ports, including ethernet ports.
They are typically designed for higher bandwidth connections to routers.
An enterprise-class switch tends to offer 48 ports plus a few extra for high-speed backbone connectivity.
Switches generally offer ethernet ports, though some enterprise-class devices may offer other connectivity options.
Most switches will only provide one connectivity option.
Some, however, are modular and can offer more than one, typically ethernet and fiber.
Though other connectivity options are available.
This means that it routes data via MAC addresses rather than via IP addresses.
Switches that do not purely layer 2 based are called multilayer switches.
Basic switches dont have any configurable options and are called unmanaged.
Many home office switches offer a web management interface with basic functionality.
Enterprise-class switches are managed and offer primarily CLI-based configuration.
Often via a console port, though web link configuration may be possible.
A home office switch tends to be a lot smaller.
They may offer as few as 4 ports, plus one for a connection to a router.
Broadcast Storms
Generally, a mesh of connectivity between devices is desirable in computer networking.
A mesh topology offers redundancy in case of link or machine failure.
There is a problem doing that with switches, though.
Because switches are within a broadcast domain, they transmit any broadcast packet they receive on all other ports.
This broadcast loop consumes the buffer space in a relatively short time.
Overwhelming the switchs ability to transmit data and causing a broadcast storm.
These tend to render the online grid unusable.
The software does exist to neutralize the risk of a broadcast storm.
Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol, RSTP, the backward compatible successor to Spanning Tree Protocol.
It allows a internet to determine preferred routes and temporarily disable non-preferred routes.
When any change to the internet is made, such as a gear.
If or link fails, the calculation is reperformed automatically, which can reenable the previously disabled backup link.
STP used to take around a minute to converge on a preferred configuration.
RSTP can complete the whole process in 6 seconds.
Some managed switches include options to drop broadcast traffic when its consuming more than a specified bandwidth.
This technique allows loops but neuters the risk of broadcast storms.
Switches operate on layer 2 of the OSI model, routing traffic by MAC address.
