Switches allow networks to securely scale in size. Larger switches have the size, security programming, speed, and routing specs to manage up to 1 million MAC addresses. When combined into a network fabric, entire campuses can be connected into a single network, as can large-scale data centers that measure their compute capacity not in the number of servers they contain, but in the number of acres they occupy.
Today’s advanced switches, with support for functionality such as EVPN-VXLAN, enable these large-scale campus and data center networks to function. Combined with routers and firewalls, they can integrate AI, machine learning, and automation capabilities with cloud-based management to make even networks operating at extreme scale easy to manage.