What To Do About DropSwitch And Get Started

In the world of computer networking, Ethernet switches are becoming more intelligent with each hardware and software release amongst all network switch vendors today. What began as network hubs (which still exist today and are strictly dumb hardware devices that connect computers) has resulted in very sophisticated network switches. The network hub takes every packet it receives using one network line and forwards to all the other network lines. The DropSwitch, on one other hand, is smart enough to inspect the packet and detect its'destination so that it can send the packet right to the designated device.

Quick History

Switching began in the telecommunications arena in the mid 1920s. Before hardware switching was introduced, a caller would call the operator and the operator would gather the information, hangup with the caller, begin a call with the required destination, call the caller back, and connect the call. So in 1926 switching hardware begun to be utilized to help the operator in connecting the call. Now the caller could stay on the line as the the call-completion time dropped to around 2 minutes. Then in the 1940's and 1950's the switching technology evolved into automated switching which lowered the call-completion time for you to 10-20 seconds. The technology then began to improve again in the 1970's when digital electronic switching came on the scene. This new technology gave switching more options because of the powerful computing that was built in to the network switches. The call-completion time became 1-2 seconds. The technology kept growing until the connection time of a phone call became very quick due to the hardware of the switch. Then in the 1990's we were introduced to Ethernet switches which currently drives the networking world, even to the stage where it now often offers the switching for voice communication (Voice Over IP).

Where Do They Get Their Smarts?

Because network switches operate at the Data Link layer of the OSI model, they've the capability to inspect each packet since it crosses each switch interface. This packet inspection ability makes for network vendors to publish code that utilizes the information gathered from the packet. These "smart" switches is now able to prioritize traffic based on the type of traffic (gathered from inspecting the packet) and the route of the traffic. In the VOIP (Voice over IP) world, this prioritization is called Quality of Service (QoS). In addition they help prevent collision domains since they limit collisions to segments, as opposed to entire domains as do Ethernet hubs.