What Is The Difference Between Switching And Routing?
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Routing and switching can be two terms that are difficult to differentiate, so here is a simple explanation that may help to clarify things. First of all switching and routing are not the same thing. Switching involves moving packets between devices on the same network. Conversely, routing involves moving packets between different networks.
Switches operate at layer 2 of the OSI Model. A switch, also referred to as a multi-port bridge, is able to determine where a packet should be sent by examining the MAC address within the data link header of the packet (the MAC address is the hardware address of a network adapter). A switch maintains a database of MAC addresses and what port they are connected to.
Routers, on the other hand, operate at layer 3 of the OSI Model. A router is able to determine where to send a packet using the Network ID within the Network layer header. It then uses the routing table to determine the route to the destination host.
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links for 2007-05-05 | Mansoor Nathani's Blog
May 4th, 2007
at 5:44pm
[...] What Is The Difference Between Switching And Routing? ~ Windows Fanatics # Add A Persistent Route To The Routing Table In Server 2003 # Enable The DHCP Relay Agent In Windows Server 2003 # Enable Or Disable Fast User Switching In XP (tags: routing) [...]
Abraham
August 28th, 2008
at 1:56am
In addition to what Diana has written, there is a small correction that switches will forward packet in the same network which is false.
As a switch doesnt know the network it just forwards the packet/frame based on the MAC and hence it is possible for multiple networks to exists on the same L2 switch eventhough this is not suggested.
Switching is ASIC based i.e is hardware based which makes it much faster than the software implementation of the conventional Routing table.