Networking By Switches and By Bridges for Networking Devices

Question: Discuss about theNetworking By Switches and By Bridges for Networking Devices. Answer: An Ethernet switch may run out of buffers due to several reasons and in turn, drop some frames before they reach the destination node or switch. Imposing half duplex semantics on some of the switch ports and halving their data rates may not be a solution. This is because half duplex Local Area Networks (LANs) may cause devices fail to send or receive data simultaneously(Held, November 1998). It would mean that we have only escalated our problem instead of solving it. The working of a half-duplex Local Area Network operates in a way that when one device sends a data frame, all the other devices connected to the switch listen to the frame and this is prone to collision. In the attempt to prevent any frame drops, we still want a condition where all devices connected can send and receive data packets simultaneously without experiencing collision which is not possible with half-duplex Local Area Network communication mode. The best solution we can have to prevent the switch from running out of buffers is increasing the Ethernet input ring buffers. The use of Virtual Output Queues is also satisfactory since the sending port will have to wait for the receiving port to have room before sending any frame(Ciampa, January 9, 2003). This means. If there is no space in the port of receipt for long, the frames will stay in the sending port buffer. If it is full, then the port will send a signal to the sending port it is connected to, to pause the transmission and a continue signal when there is a buffer. In the topology above, it is possible to replace the above intermediate devices (the hubs and bridge) with a single 96-port 10Mbps switch. The hub as a multiport repeater will send all the packets it receives from the bridge to all the devices connected to it with no data filtration and therefore, collision domain the collision domain remains as one. In the data link layer, the bridge will filter all the data packets using the Media Access Control (MAC) address of their source and destination(Bruce, 2010). Data packets in the set up will not be efficiently relayed since the hub does not look for the best path for each data packet but only forwards them(Bird Harwood, 2002). This will amount to waste of network resources due to the data packets that may be relayed to all nodes but expected by only one node. Including a switch in the setup and doing away with the hub and the bridge will be possible and we will have a buffer to improve the efficiency of the system. The switch having more ports compared to the bridge and hub will lead to less traffic in the system and incorporate error checking function before forwarding the packets. The use of a switch will be an upgrade from the original one. The switch forwards packets to the correct port only, and thus no data packets are received by the unintended receiver or wastage of networking resources. This divides the collision domain of the hosts and keeps the broadcast domain at a constant level(McQuerry, Feb 16, 1998). The switch will be able to connect all the 80 hosts and give them a constant 10Mbps speed of operation since its buffer will control the incoming and outgoing data packets. The upgrade is more efficient than the original set up since having the devices connected with the initial topology would not allow any to ever get to a speed of the 1000Mbps as indicated due to lack of data filtration and forwarding packets to all the devices(Spurgeon, 2008). References Bird, D. Harwood, M., 2002. Networking Components and Devices. [Online] Available at: https://www.pearsonitcertification.com/articles/article.aspx?p=30191[Accessed 28 August 2017]. Bruce, H., 2010. Networking: A Beginner's Guide. Fifth Edition ed. s.l.:McGraw Hill. Ciampa, M., January 9, 2003. Networking BASICS (BASICS Series). Second Edition ed. s.l.:Course Technology. Held, G., November 1998. ata Communications Networking Devices: Operation, Utilization and Lan and Wan Internetworking. Fourth Edition ed. s.l.:Wiley.com. McQuerry, S., Feb 16, 1998. uthorized Self-Study Guide. Interconnecting Cisco. Network Devices,. Part 1 (ICND1). Second Edition ed. s.l.:Cisco Press. Spurgeon, C., 2008. Multi-Segment Configuration Guidelines. [Online] Available at: https://www.ethermanage.com/ethernet/ch13-ora/ch13.html [Accessed 28 08 2017].