Networking Devices & Virtual LAN

Connecting Devices
Hubs
Bridges
Switches
 CONNECTING DEVICES
• Connecting Devices – Used to connect LAN’s or Segments of LAN’s
• Connecting devices - five different categories based on the layer in
which they operate in a network.

Figure: Five categories of connecting devices

 CONNECTING DEVICES - Categories

• Passive hub – operates below physical layer,

switch electrical signals
• Active hub/Repeater – operates at physical layer
• Bridge or two - layer switch – operates at physical
and data link layer, switch frames
• Router or three - layer switch - operates at
physical, data link layer and network layer, switch
packets
• Gateway – operates at all five layers
 1. Passive Hubs

• Just a Connector connecting wires from different

branches
• Joins multiple input lines electrically and is a
collision point
• Designed to hold multiple line cards
• Do not necessarily amplify the signal
• Operates below the physical layer
 2. Repeaters
• Distance limitation in local-area networks
– Electrical signal becomes weaker as it travels
– Imposes a limit on the length of a LAN
• Repeater receives signal before it becomes weak or corrupted ,
regenerates original bit pattern
 Repeaters..

• A repeater connects segments of a LAN but cannot

connect two LAN’s of different protocol.
• A repeater forwards every frame; it has no filtering
capability
• A repeater is a regenerator, not an amplifier.
bit for bit copy
remove noise, but do not correct/detect error
Recover the signal strength
Figure Function of a repeater
 Active Hub
• An active hub is actually a multiport repeater
• Used to create connections between stations
• Because of the amount of traffic and collisions, hubs can only
be used in small network configurations.

Figure A hierarchy of hubs

 3. Bridge
• Operates in both physical and data link layer
Physical Layer – regenerates the received signal
Data Link Layer - bridge checks physical ( MAC) addresses
(source & Destination)
• Bridge has filtering Capacity – check destination address and
decide whether frame should be forwarded or dropped
• Connects two or more LANs at the link layer
– Extracts destination address from the frame
– Looks up the destination in a table that maps addresses to ports
– Forwards the frame to the appropriate LAN segment
• Each segment can carry its own traffic
• In Ethernet, Ethernet switch is a bridge device
Figure: A bridge connecting two LANs
Note

• A bridge does not change the physical (MAC)

addresses in a frame.
• A two layer switch is a bridge, bridge with many
ports and a design that allows faster performance.
- makes filtering decision based on MAC
- Can also have buffer to hold frames
-New Cut- through switches – forward immediately
the frame after checking
• A three layer switch is a Router that forward
packets based on logical address.
• Router connects LAN’s & WAN”S and has routing
table to make decisions on route.
 VIRTUAL LANs

We can roughly define a virtual local area network

(VLAN) as a local area network configured by software,
not by physical wiring.

Topics
Membership
Configuration
Communication between Switches
IEEE Standard
Advantages
Figure A switch connecting three LANs

Physical wiring makes it hard to

dynamically change group allocation
Figure A switch using VLAN software
Figure Two switches in a backbone using VLAN software

Good for a company with two separate buildings

Note

VLANs create broadcast domains.

 VLAN: Membership Definition

• Switch port Numbers

• MAC Address
• IP Address
• Multicast IP Address
• Combination
 VLAN Configuration

• Manually
• Automatic
• Semiautomatic
 VLAN: Communication between switches

• Table maintenance
• Frame tagging
– Extra header added to MAC frame to define the
destination VLAN
• Time-Division Multiplexing (TDM)
 VLAN: Advantages

• Cost and time reduction

• Creating Virtual Work Groups
• Security
– Separation of broadcast messages