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To: joe who wrote (18213)	6/25/1998 9:30:00 AM
From: Igor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 45548

>>I think there's a good connection between the gigabit ethernet and Layer 3 Switching. Maybe somebody can help me out here?<< Gigabit Ethernet and Layer 3 switching is a very powerful combination in a switch. Gigabit Ethernet is how fast data gets into the switch (1,000,000,000 bits of data per second) sort of a data pipe. A Layer 3 Switch is a routing function where data is received from one interface (i.e. Gigabit Ethernet, Fast Ethernet,...) and routed to another interface (i.e. Gigabit Ethernet, Fast ethernet...). In a Layer 3 switch this routing happens so fast that it would seem as a point to point connection between send and receive interface. In a traditional router this functions is delayed by a lot of queuing and processing and is much slower. Layer 2 Switches are currently the most widely used technology. One of the drawbacks of Layer 2 Switching is the broadcast oriented nature of the switch to learn where network devices are and this does not make it suitable for the core swithcing. Usually core switching in the wide are networking handles slower links and broadcast traffic could chew up a lot of expensive bandwidth. As opposed to Layer 2 switches, Layer 3 switches are Layer 3 protocol sensitive (IP, IPX). Layer 3 is the Networking layer of the protocol stack in OSI model. Routers or Layer 3 swithces use this layer to learn where network devices are. In summary layer 3 switches are faster and simpler to use and reduce the need to use different technology in core and edge.