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RE: What is the differents between Switch and Router?

2001-03-19 08:10:02
<<On Sun, 18 Mar 2001 16:06:18 +0100, Harald Alvestrand 
<Harald(_at_)Alvestrand(_dot_)no> said:

note: I have not yet found anything that allows me to tell the difference 
between a switch and something that is not a switch. That is one reason why 
I prefer to avoid the term.

Hmmm.  I always thought that the definition of ``switch'' in a packet
context was fairly well-understood:

        A switch is a device which accepts a packet, performs some
        computation on the contents of the packet combined with
        internal state, and uses the result of that computation to
        determine where (if anywhere) to forward the packet.

Thus, a router is a kind of switch (one which implements the
internetwork layer of the Internet reference model), but so is a
bridge and so is a NAT.

I'm not sure whence comes the marketing definition of ``switch'' as
anything that processes packets faster than a competitor's product,
but I've long since given up trying to understand the thought
processes of marketing people.

-GAWollman



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