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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Extreme BlackDiamond
On Mon, Oct 13, 2003 at 11:10:32PM +0200, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote: > > On Mon, 13 Oct 2003 [email protected] wrote: > > > I don't understand how you can differentiate between a router and an L3 > > switch. In my view "L3 switch" is a marketing term. All high end boxes > > do hardware based IP forwarding, whether their ancestry is from the L2 > > or the L3 side. > > To me something that uses hardware assist, setup by the cpu per > destination, is an L3 Switch. Something that does equal route lookups per > packet all the time is a router. So a 7500 with a fast cache is a L3 switch? :) The closest definition you'll get to an L3 switch is a box which does primarily or only Ethernet, can easily become an L2 ethernet switch again with different software, and uses software hacks on a normal ethernet CAM to do forwarding lookups. Other than that, it's just generalizations and stereotypes. Oh and of course, marketing. -- Richard A Steenbergen <[email protected]> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)
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