What are the advantages and disadvantages of switch
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Answer Posted / ramganesh1982
Reposting it as the Poster name got changed to Guest
probably due to auto logout ..
Also the last few lines had some typo.. corrected them
here.There should be some way to edit the posting in this
site.At least my own posting should be made available for
editing :(
A switch is just a another n/w device which has its own
Advantages and Disadvantages as compared to a
HUB/Router/Bridge etc ... I hope it doesnt have any
disadvantages as such unless and until compared to other
n/w devices[Note : This is just my opinion,please add
details if you have some]
Advantages :
1) Reduces the number of Broadcast domains
2) Supports VLAN's which can help in Logical segmentation
of ports[physical ports].Splitting up the broadcast domain.
3) Intellegent device[compared to Hub's] which can make use
of CAM table for Port to MAC mapping
4) Compared to Bridges ,Switches are more H/w oriented
therefore operations are less CPU intense[Basic operations]
.
5) The cost to number of ports ratio is best .. ie For a
cheaper cost you get switches with more number of ports
available than Routers.
Disadvantages :
1) Not as good as a router in limiting Broadcasts
2) Communication b/w VLAN's need interVLAN routing [Router]
,but these days there are a number of Multilayer switches
available in the market.
3) Handling Multicast packets needs quite a bit of
configuration & proper designing.
4) At times swtiches when in Promiscuos mode is a opening
for Security attacks [Spoofing ip address or capturing
Ethernet Frames using ethereal]
I would definitely arguee with the interviewer that
switches are designed for what they are & there is no
disadvatage as such unless it is compared to other layer
devices.At Layer 2 it does what other devices of layer 2
cant do & it was initally meant to work at Layer 2,even
though it works at multiple layers these days.
| Is This Answer Correct ? | 67 Yes | 46 No |
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