PGIICT40418 INSTALL,

CONFIGURE, AND TEST A

LOCAL AREA NETWORK
SWITCH
Research Questions
Trainer: Lornah
Samol

Filgreg Philip
Fphilip@tafe.iea.ac.pg
1. Look up cisco switches and hubs and describe the advantages
and disadvantages of switches over Hubs.
Hubs are multiport repeater, providing central connectivity for network device and extension of the
physical media.

A hub is a generic connection device used to tie several networking cables together to create a link
between different stations on a network.

Hubs that are plugged into electric power are called active hubs. They usually amplify or repeat signals
that pass through them. Because they have multiple inbound and outbound connections, these hubs are
also known as multiport repeaters.

A hub that merely connects different cables on the network and provides no signal regeneration is called
a passive hub and is not a repeater.

Advantages
 Can extend the total network distance
 Can connect to network using different physical media
Disadvantages
 Hubs divide the total network bandwidth between each of its connected ports
 Do not reduce network traffic
 Cannot connect different network architectures
Switching hubs or Switch operate at the Data Link layer. Switches increase network performance
by reducing the number of packets transmitted to the rest of the network. The switch opens a virtual
circuit between the source and the destination. This prevents communications between two computers
from being broadcast to every computer on the network.

When two machines have a virtual circuit, they do not have to share the wire with any other computers.
If the network transfer capacity is 10 megabits per second (Mbps), the two machines get the full
bandwidth – 10Mbps. A switch reduces problems associated with multiple computers transmitting at
the same time by subdividing the network into virtual circuits.

Advantages
 Switches have increased available network bandwidth.
 There is reduced workload on individual computers.
 Increased network performance.
 There are fewer packet collisions.
Disadvantages
 They are significantly more expensive.
 Network problems can be difficult to trace through a switch.

https://www.diffen.com/difference/Hub_vs_Switch
2. Research the Australian Computer Society code of Ethics
handbook and identify and evaluate sections in regard to
network switches.
A. Priorities
 I will endeavor to preserve continuity of computing services and information
flow in my care.
B. Competence
 I will work competently and diligently for my clients and employees
 I will endeavor to provide products and services which match the operational
and financial needs of my clients and employers.
C. Honesty
 I will be honest in my representation of skills, knowledge, services and products
 I will not knowingly mislead a client or potential client as to the suitability of a
product or service.
 I will qualify professional opinions which I know are based on limited knowledge
or experience.
D. Social Implications
 I will endeavor to understand, and give due regard to, the perceptions of those
affected by my work.
E. Computing Profession.
 I will no-operate in advancing information processing by communication with
other professionals, students and the public, and by contributing to the efforts
of professional and scientific societies and schools.
 I acknowledge my debt to the Computing Profession and in return will protect
and promote professionalism in computing.

https://users.ece.utexas.edu/~perry/education/SE-Intro/ACS-COE.pdf
 3. Draw a table to describe the common network cable
and connectors

Cables and Connectors Description

Fiber-optic cabling is the most expensive
type. Although it's an excellent medium, it's
often not used because of the cost of
implementing it. It has a glass core within a
rubber outer coating and uses beams of light
rather than electrical signals to relay data.

Twisted Per cable

There are two primary types of twisted-pair
cabling (with categories beneath cach that
are shielded twisted pair (STP) and
unshielded twisted pair (UTP). In both cases,
the cabling is made up of pairs of wires
twisted around each other. UTP offers no
shielding (hence the name) and is the
network cabling type most prone to outside
interference. The interference can be from a
fluorescent light ballast, electrical motor, or
other such source (known as
electromagnetic interference [EMI]) or from
wires being too close together and signals
jumping across them (known as crosstalk),
STP adds a foil shield around the twisted
wires to protect against EMI.

Wiring standards: T568A, T568B

Two wiring standards are commonly
used with twisted-pair cabling: T568A
and T568B (sometimes referred to
simply as 568A and 568B). These are
telecommunications standards from TIA
and EIA that specify the pin
arrangements for the RJ-45 connectors
on UTP or STP cables. The number 568
refers to the order in which the wires
within the Category 5 cable are
terminated and attached to the
connector. The signal is identical for
both.
T568A was the first standard, released
in 1991. Ten years later, in 2001, T568B
was released. Pin numbers are read left
to right, with the connector tab facing
down. Notice that the pin-outs stay the
same, and the only difference is in the
color coding of the wiring.
Coaxial Cable
This cable contains a conductor,
insulator, braiding, and sheath. The
sheath covers the braiding, braiding
covers the insulation, and the insulation
covers the conductor

Fiber optic connectors require different

types of connectors from those used
with coax or twisted-pair cables, such as
CAT5e. These types of connectors in
networking must align glass fibers with
precision to allow for communication.
 HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia
Interface) is a proprietary audio/video
interface for transmitting uncompressed
video data and compressed or
uncompressed digital audio data from
an HDMI-compliant source device, such
as a display controller, to a compatible
computer monitor, video projector, and
digital television.

4. Explain the difference between standard and

intelligent (i.e. configurable) switches and between
switches and hubs.
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.

A network switch is a multiport network bridge that uses MAC addresses to forward data at the data link
layer (layer 2) of the OSI model. Some switches can also forward data at the network layer (layer 3) by
additionally incorporating routing functionality. Such switches are commonly known as layer-3 switches
or multilayer switches.

Switches for Ethernet are the most common form of network switch. The first Ethernet switch was
introduced in 1990. Switches also exist for other types of networks including Fiber Channel,
Asynchronous Transfer Mode, and InfiniBand.

Unlike less advanced repeater hubs, which broadcast the same data out of each of its ports and lets the
devices determine which data is addressed to them, a network switch forwards data only to the devices
to which it is addressed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_switch
5. Outline the importance of client document prepared when
installing networks.
When building any network, documentation is extremely important. Good documentation will assist
your colleagues in working out where a problem lies when troubleshooting, as well as allow others to
understand how devices communicate. By documenting the network layout as you go, you will save
time later and give yourself a path to track back if you make changes to the network.

Without any network documentation, diagnosing and resolving faults will take longer, which means
more downtime than necessary for your customer.

Network documentation can include anything from a map of the network, to a simple document that
matches IP addresses to a device.

As an example, let’s say that we have a simple network that contains a router, switch, server, access
point and two hosts. The below would suffice for documentation.

https://www.beaming.co.uk/knowledge-base/importance-network-documentation/#:~:text=Network
%20documentation%20is%20extremely%20important.&text=Without%20any%20network
%20documentation%2C%20diagnosing,IP%20addresses%20to%20a%20device.

6. Explain how to provide the network with redundant paths for

reliability and how routers and switches manage these paths.
Routers

The Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) is a computer networking protocol that provides for

automatic assignment of available Internet Protocol (IP) routers to participating hosts. This increases the
availability and reliability of routing paths via automatic default gateway selections on an IP subnetwork.

The protocol achieves this by creation of virtual routers, which are an abstract representation of
multiple routers, i.e. master and backup routers, acting as a group. The virtual router is assigned to act
as a default gateway of participating hosts, instead of a physical router. If the physical router that
is routing packets on behalf of the virtual router fails, another physical router is selected to
automatically replace it. The physical router that is forwarding packets at any given time is called the
master router.

VRRP provides information on the state of a router, not the routes processed and exchanged by that
router. Each VRRP instance is limited, in scope, to a single subnet. It does not advertise IP routes beyond
that subnet or affect the routing table in any way. VRRP can be used in Ethernet, MPLS and token ring
networks with Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4), as well as IPv6.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Router_Redundancy_Protocol#:~:text=The%20Virtual%20Router
%20Redundancy%20Protocol,selections%20on%20an%20IP%20subnetwork.

Switch
Virtual Switch Redundancy Protocol (VSRP) is a Ruckus proprietary protocol that provides redundancy
and sub-second failover in Layer 2 and Layer 3 mesh topologies. Based on the Ruckus Virtual Router
Redundancy Protocol Extended (VRRP-E), VSRP provides one or more backups for a device. If the active
device becomes unavailable, one of the backups takes over as the active device and continues
forwarding traffic for the network.
Ruckus switches support full VSRP as well as VSRP-awareness. A Ruckus device that is not itself
configured for VSRP but is connected to a Ruckus device that is configured for VSRP, is considered to be
VSRP aware.
You can use VSRP for Layer 2, Layer 3, or for both layers. On Layer 3 devices, Layer 2 and Layer 3 share
the same VSRP configuration information.
http://docs.ruckuswireless.com/fastiron/08.0.70/fastiron-08070-l2guide/GUID-389DFF1D-065D-
46E7-9B26-118BA55193D4.html