The Difference Between Switches and Routers

Let's take the CX600 Router and the Huawei CX600 Switch as examples to talk about the difference between switches and routers. A switch, also known as a switched hub, can be simply understood as connecting some computers together to form a local area network.

1. Let's take a few examples. The router is a small post office. It is an address (IP) that is responsible for sending and receiving (a personal computer, a server, so you need to go online). The switch is the big postal center in the province. Responsible for the connection to each small place by an address. Simply put, the router specializes in the network, the switch only manages the distribution, the route routing is to find the way for you to access the Internet, the switch is only responsible for opening the door, there is no route on the switch, you can not get on the network.

2. The CX600 Router provides services for the firewall. The CX600 Router only forwards packets of a specific address, and does not transmit packet transmissions that do not support routing protocols and transmission of unknown destination network packets, thereby preventing broadcast storms.

3. The switch is a network cable, but everyone dials the Internet and uses their own broadband. Everyone has no influence on the Internet. The router has one more virtual dialing function than the switch. The computer that accesses the Internet through the same router shares a broadband account, and everyone has to interact with each other.

4. The Huawei CX600 Switch works at the relay layer. The switch is addressed based on the MAC address. The router works at the network layer. According to the IP address addressing, the router can handle the TCP/IP protocol, but the switch cannot.

5. The switch can make multiple computers connected to it form a local area network. If there is a proxy server, it can also realize the simultaneous Internet access function and all the computers on the local area network share its bandwidth rate, but the switch does not have the automatic identification data packet transmission and arrival of the router. The function of the address. The router can automatically identify the address where the packet is sent and arrived. The router is equivalent to the police on the road and is responsible for traffic guidance and guidance.

The difference between a router and a switch is obvious. Its role is to connect different network segments and find the most suitable path for data transmission in the network, but the two are not completely unrelated.