Hubs, Switches and Bridges

Hubs
 4 ports
 Physically star/Logically Bus
 Flooding always happens
 Unintelligent device
 Number of ports: 4, 8, 12, 32
 Layer 1 device
 Active: increases the signal strength
 Passive: Without rising the strength of the signal
 Half Duplex
 Types of Addressing
 Unicast
 Multicast
 Broadcast
 Hubs
 active central element of star layout
 each station connected to hub by two UTP lines
 hub acts as a repeater
 limited to about 100 m by UTP properties
 optical fiber may be used out to 500m
 transmission from a station seen by all others
 if two stations transmit at the same time have a
collision
Two Level Hub Topology
 Switches
 Hardware based device
 ASIC Chip used
 MaintainMAC table
 Performance faster
 Number of ports: 8, 12, 24, 48, 400, 800
 High end switch
 Bridges
 connects similar LANs
 identical physical / link layer protocols
 minimal processing
 can map between MAC formats
 reasons for use
 reliability
 performance
 security
 geography
Bridge Function
 Bridges (Contd…)
 Intelligent device
 Software based device
 Performance is slow
 Maintains MAC table
 MAC Table is filled dynamically
 Initially the MAC table is empty
 Bridge forwards the frames by looking into the MAC
table
 Layer 2 device
 Max Number of ports: 16
 MAC table is also called as CAM table (Content
Addressable Memory)
 Destination address is not known, it will be forwarded
to all ports.
 Sending is broadcast and receiving is multicast.
 Ageing time is 300 seconds.
 Bridge Design Aspects
 no modification to frame content or format
 no encapsulation
 exact bitwise copy of frame
 minimal buffering to meet peak demand
 contains routing and address intelligence
 may connect more than two LANs
 bridging is transparent to stations
Bridge Protocol Architecture
 IEEE 802.1D
 MAC level
 bridge does not need LLC layer
 can pass frame over external comms system
 capture frame
 encapsulate it
 forward it across link
 remove encapsulation and forward over LAN link
 e.g. WAN link
Bridges and
LANs
Loop of Bridges
Shared
Medium
Bus and
Hub
 Switch vs Bridge
 switch can be viewed as full-duplex hub
 differences between switches & bridges:
 bridge frame handling done in software
 switch performs frame forwarding in hardware
 bridge analyzes and forwards one frame at a time
 switch can handle multiple frames at a time
 bridge uses store-and-forward operation
 switch can have cut-through operation
 hence bridge have suffered commercially
 Typical
Large
LAN
Organization
Diagram