Talk:Network switch

message: Hello,  and !  Regarding  to the  section, we should discuss here so it doesn't unnecessarily turn into WP:EDITWARRING.  I've compared the content of the blog entry with what this article already contains, and everything is pretty much already covered managed, unmanaged, PoE, L2, L3, etc.  Please have a look at the article as a whole, and I'm sure you'll agree that some radical changes (and ) are not required. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 21:57, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed – dumping an external link doesn't improve the article. Looks rather like link spam even though the linked source is at least partially unbiased. Zac67 (talk) 22:25, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

text: Please check WP:NOT since you seem to be new to WP (welcome by the way!). Your input is appreciated but updates and changes need to be incorporated in the text that people read, using reliable sources where appropriate. The link style was bad as it was done and didn't improve the text at all, rather refer to somewhere else. Your objections are (mainly) valid but we need to improve the text here and not build a link list to refer elsewhere. Please be aware that this article tries to cover the general topics and not mirror the very latest advances in the industry nor focus on a certain manufacturer's philosophy. If we're able to compile a to-do list with outdated or incomplete info we'll surely all benefit. Zac67 (talk) 11:18, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

text: Sounds good to me, please go ahead as you've described it. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 16:05, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

text: Dsimic - please go ahead and make any edits you deem necessary.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Switchguy (talk • contribs) 19:02, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  There's quite some work required, I'll see to do that in the next three or four days. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 00:19, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Types of switches 

message: My first pass - comments/edits welcome:
The most basic switch you can buy is an Unmanaged Switch. Devices (PCs, Printers, Wireless Access Points, Servers, IP phones, Storage, Surveillance cameras, other Switches, and many others) can be connected to these switches and it will provide connectivity between all of these devices. This connectivity is very basic however. Unmanaged switches are not manageable (except for a few corner case options in the market) - i.e. you cannot connect to the switch from a PC or some external device and change its configuration and operation. The most advanced Unmanaged switches in the market have a pre-set QoS (Quality of Service) mapping table where packets that are received on the switch with L2 QoS (802.1p) or L3 QoS (DSCP, TOS, or IP Precedence) are prioritized and treated differently based on this table. This allows the network administrator to set priorities on the endpoints or applications and have the switches in the network automatically enforce that priority. That way, voice traffic is not degraded when there is an unusual burst of data traffic in the network. It is important to note that you have no flexibility with Unmanaged switches. Endpoints must be set to match the mapping table in the switch or you will not get the desired effects. You also do not have the visibility into things which are good for troubleshooting like a way to tell how many packets have been treated as high priority versus low, or a means to change any settings on the switch. The more advanced Unmanaged Switches also come with EEE (IEEE 802.3az) for Energy Efficiency and also a few with POE (power over Ethernet). Unmanaged switches are the most cost-effective in the market and you can generally find them in port configurations ranging from 4 ports to 24 ports and in 10/100, Gigabit Ethernet, and 10 Gigabit Ethernet options. They come in desktop and rack mount configuration options. They work well in environments which are very simple (plug and play) such as anywhere you need a few extra ports with minimal control - conference rooms, at home, in a lab, very small office, etc.
Smart Switches (also called Smart Managed or Lightly Managed Switches) is the next tier up from Unmanaged Switches. These switches add much more flexibility to the network. They are configurable and offer much more capabilities. They allow you to segment your user population into workgroups which are isolated from each other using VLANs. They add capabilities to secure the network, preventing unauthorized users from connecting to the network (using IEEE 802.1x). Additionally, newer Smart Switches allow you to disallow certain users from accessing certain applications while others can access the same applications using ACLs (Access Control Lists).
Smart switches allow you to configure QoS according to your network or application needs. The switches can either trust the settings which have been set by the endpoints, or re-mark these per network policy requirements. These switches are a better fit for Voice and Video environments than the Unmanaged switches. They offer a simple, easy-to-use Web management interface as a standard feature. You can also find some Smart switches supporting management via CLI and/or SNMP/RMON as well. You can find Smart switches in the market in port configurations generally ranging from 5 ports to 48 ports and in 10/100, Gigabit Ethernet, and 10 Gigabit Ethernet options. Switches can be purchased with/without Power over Ethernet (POE). They can also be purchased with copper or fiber ports on them. There are even a few supporting Stacking. Smart Switches come in desktop and rack mount configuration options. The most optimal deployment scenarios for Smart switches is 1) as the infrastructure for small, simple networks, 2) where cost is a key consideration, or 3) at the edge of a larger network where a Managed switch is used in core. 
Managed Switches (also called Enterprise Managed) are the next tier up from Smart Switches. Here, the focus is on platforms which can enable any application, scale to very large networks, maximal uptime, together with the Security, QoS, and Management options to make all of this possible.
Managed Switches can flexibly be deployed in the Network Centre (or Core), Aggregation layer, or Access layer. If the core of a network goes down, the whole network is affected. Therefore, Managed switches offer many capabilities to ensure the network remains up. This includes elements of protecting the switch CPU (with control plane policing), protecting the layer 2 domain (with items such as Spanning Tree Root and BPDU Guard), Denial of Service (DoS) Attack prevention, and Layer 3 First Hop Security with capabilities such as VRRP, HSRP, and GLBP. 
Managed switches scale far beyond Smart Switches. They have larger tables (for MAC addresses, VLANs, Link Aggregation Groups, IP routes or interfaces, Multicast groups, etc), ACLs, more hardware queues, etc. All capabilities are deeper with more knobs and levers to enable, control, and troubleshoot them. Some of the Management options include a full CLI, HTTP/S Web Interface, SNMP/RMON, and discovery through LLDP, CDP, and Bonjour. It may also include Netflow, SFlow, IPFIX, and other Performance Management protocols.
Then there is Security. Managed switches offer First Hop Security (ARP Inspection, IP Source Guard, DHCP Snooping) and their IPv6 equivalents. They offer Policing and shaping of traffic. They also offer the capacity to drop traffic by L2, L3, L4 address or TCP/UDP port, physical port, and a lot more. The Management traffic is also secured with things like SSH, SCP, HTTPS, SNMPv3, and external authentication via Radius/TACACS. 
For better application control, there is more options for unicast and multicast traffic. For Multicast, there is IGMP Querier (for IPv4), MLD Querier (for IPv6) and Proxy functions added to the Snooping capabilities. For unicast, more queues, flexible assignment of traffic to queues, Accounting, and much more. The discovery of voice endpoints and traffic coupled with the QoS mechanisms built into the switches, make them the best option for IP voice deployments. They may also include dynamic unicast or multicast protocols such as OSPF, BGP, RIP, EIGRP, PIM and others.
While you can find a few stackable Smart switches in the market, Stacking (link to Stacking) tends to be the domain of Managed Switches. The reason for this is that, since a stack of switches tend to be a large concentration of ports and users, the scalability, security, availability, and instrumentation offered by Managed Switches is essential for successful deployment and operation of the stack. 
Managed switches can also come in a Modular platform configuration. Modular switches tend to  consist of a chassis which houses blades or cards delivering different interfaces/port options, application modules, power supplies, cooling fans. The idea being that you add new modules into the chassis as you grow or as the technology changes. 
You can find fixed Managed switches in the market in port configurations generally ranging from 5 ports to 48 ports and in 10/100, Gigabit Ethernet, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and 40/100 Gigabit options. They come in desktop and rack-mount configuration options. Switches can be purchased with/without Power over Ethernet (POE). They can also be purchased with copper or fiber ports on them. With Modular switches, you purchase a chassis with several open slots. You then also have to purchase interface modules housing your physical interfaces (copper or fiber), modules for applications (like Firewall, Intrusion Detection, VPN, Wireless, or Performance Analysis), Supervisor modules (brains of the switch), power supplies, and cooling fans.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Switchguy (talk • contribs) 03:29, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Dsimic - please go ahead and make any edits you deem necessary.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Switchguy (talk • contribs) 19:02, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  There's quite some work required, I'll see to do that in the next three or four days. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 00:19, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Content proposal 

message: * , thank you for putting it together.  Would  be supposed to go into the  section?  Speaking right off the bat, it would require some work to meet the style required by Wikipedia; please don't get me wrong, but did you have a chance to have a look at the Wikipedia's Manual of Style?  For example, the second person ("you", "your") isn't supposed to be used as it sounds like suggesting what's only to be described; please see MOS:YOU for more details. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 08:23, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Dsimic - please go ahead and make any edits you deem necessary.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Switchguy (talk • contribs) 19:02, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  There's quite some work required, I'll see to do that in the next three or four days. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 00:19, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments on the proposal 

message: Can someone summarize what's going on here? I've marked  with . I hope that's what we're trying to address. I don't see any evidence of a potential edit war so please be bold and put proposed changes directly into the article. ~KvnG 00:21, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: TL;DR

message: This content could be used to improve the Layer-specific functionality section here. I do not see a good reason for there to be a separate article on this sub-topic. ~Kvng (talk) 15:39, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Support – see no reason for a separate article; devices and functionality aren't easily separated. --Zac67 (talk) 17:37, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

text: I'm ready to do this merge but it appears to be a pretty big job. LAN switching is not well referenced so maybe a lot of that material will not make the cut in a merge. Though I would feel obliged to review it all. I'm going to start by refamiliarizing myself with the contents of the target sections in Network switch. ~Kvng (talk) 20:15, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

text: I'm now prepared to merge the material in Network switch#Layer-specific functionality with what's in LAN switching and Multilayer switch. My inclination is to convert Network switch#Layer-specific functionality to a summary that points to Multilayer switch. LAN switching would redirect to Network switch. I'm sure this is not the world's best organization but I believe it is a clear improvement to covering the same material three different places. We can do further improvements afterwards. ~Kvng (talk) 13:21, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  That sounds like a good revised plan. I agree that 2 articles rather than the existing 3 is appropriate, with the LAN switching page becoming a redirect to Network switch. It looks like a manageable job. Klbrain (talk) 11:28, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

text: I have done a rough merge of LAN switching into Multilayer switch. There is some unnecessary repetition. I will try to comb that out. ~Kvng (talk) 15:40, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge from [[LAN switching]] 

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replies: text: is a corrupt file and, from the looks of the metadata, likely an unreliable source. I have replaced it. ~Kvng (talk) 22:53, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified (February 2018) 

message: Following is the first sentence in the article:
A network switch (also called switching hub, bridging hub, and, by the IEEE, MAC bridge) is networking hardware that connects devices on a computer network by using packet switching to receive and forward data to the destination device.
I believe that the use of packet switching needs a citation. This seems to contradict the idea that the switch operates at the datalink level (2-level) and that operation at the network level (3-level) (packet switching) glorifies the switch to router status, which does not apply to all switches. 174.29.69.108 (talk) 19:48, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Please use the New section button to add a new thread, don't add to to some random section. I've created a section header for you. I don't understand your problem. Network switches using packet switching? Layer-3 switches effectively being hardware-based routers? Packet switching applies to any kind of packet-based forwarding, in contrast to circuit-based switching. The concept of switching packets predates the concepts of distinct network layering by at least a decade. --Zac67 (talk) 20:54, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation needed for 'packet switching'