Switched Media Technologies

LAN Switch

LAN switches are used to interconnect multiple LAN segments. LAN

switching provides dedicated, collision-free communication between
network devices, with support for multiple simultaneous conversations.
LAN switches are designed to switch data frames at high speeds. The
figure illustrates a simple network in which a LAN switch interconnects
a 10-Mbps and a 100-Mbps Ethernet LAN.

ATM Switch

Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) switches provide high-speed

switching and scalable bandwidths in the workgroup, the enterprise
network backbone, and the wide area. ATM switches support voice,
video, and data applications, and are designed to switch fixed-size
information units called cells, which are used in ATM communications.
The figure illustrates an enterprise network comprised of multiple LANs
interconnected across an ATM backbone.

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Switched Multimegabit Data Service

SMDS is a high-speed, packet-switched, datagram-based WAN

networking technology used for communication over public data
networks (PDNs). SMDS can use fiber- or copper-based media. It
supports speeds of 1.544 Mbps over DS-1 transmission facilities, or
44.736 Mbps over DS-3 transmission facilities.

The following devices comprise SMDS networks:

• Customer premises equipment (CPE)

• Carrier equipment

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 • Subscriber network interface (SNI)

The SNI is the interface between the CPE and carrier equipment; it
transparently enables data transmission between the two networks.

• SMDS uses SIP to communicate between CPE and the carrier site
using the DQDB standard for cell relay across MANs.
• SIP consist of the following three levels:
1. SIP Level 3, which operates at the MAC sublayer of the data
link layer of the OSI reference model
2. SIP Level 2, which also operates at the MAC sublayer of the
data link layer of the OSI reference model
3. SIP Level 1, which operates at the physical layer of the OSI
reference model

• SMDS PDUs carry both a source and a destination address, and

offer both group addressing and security features.

Data Link Switching

Data-link switching (DLSw) provides a means of transporting IBM

Systems Network Architecture (SNA) and network basic input/output
system (NetBIOS) traffic over an IP network. It serves as an alternative
to source-route bridging (SRB), a protocol for transporting SNA and
NetBIOS traffic in Token Ring environments that was widely deployed
before the introduction of DLSw. In general, DLSw addresses some of
the shortcomings of SRB for certain communication requirements—
particularly in WAN implementations. This chapter contrasts DLSw with

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SRB, summarizes underlying protocols, and provides a synopsis of
normal protocol operations.

DLSw initially emerged as a proprietary IBM solution in 1992. It was

first submitted to the IETF as RFC 1434 in 1993. DLSw is now
documented in detail by IETF RFC 1795, which was submitted in April
1995. DLSw was jointly developed by the Advanced Peer-to-Peer
Networking (APPN) Implementors Workshop (AIW) and the Data-Link
Switching Related Interest Group (DLSw RIG).

Three primary functions of DLSw:

• The Switch-to-Switch Protocol (SSP) is the protocol maintained

between two DLSw nodes or routers.
• The termination of SNA data-link control (DLC) connections helps
to reduce the likelihood of link layer timeouts across WANs.
• The local mapping of DLC connections to a DLSw circuit.

Multiprotocol Label Switching / Tag Switching

Multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) changes the hop-by-hop paradigm

by enabling devices to specify paths in the network based upon QoS
and bandwidth needs of the applications. In other words, path selection
can now take into account Layer 2 attributes. Before MPLS, vendors
implemented proprietary methods for switching frames with values
other than the Layer 3 header. Based upon Cisco's proprietary tag-
switching protocol, the IETF is defining MPLS as a vendor-independent
protocol. Although the two protocols have much in common,

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differences between them prevent tag-switching devices from
interacting directly with MPLS devices. MPLS will likely supersede tag
switching.

Shared Media Technology

Shared VLAN

VLAN configurations group users by logical association rather

than physical location. A majority of networks currently installed
provide very limited logical segmentation. Users are commonly
grouped based on connections to the shared hub and the router ports

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between the hubs. This topology provides segmentation only between
the hubs, which are typically located on separate floors, and not
between users connected to the same hub. This imposes physical
constraints on the network and limits how users can be grouped. While
a few shared-hub architectures have some grouping capability, they
restrict how you can configure logically defined workgroups.

Shared Token Ring

Developed by IBM, Token Ring, is standardized to IEEE 802.5. Token

Ring uses a star topology, but it is wired so the signal will travel from
hub to hub in a logical ring. These networks use a data token passed
from computer to computer around the ring to allow each computer to
have network access. The token comes from the nearest active
upstream neighbor (NAUN). When a computer receives a token, if it
has no attached data and the computer has data for transmission, it
attaches its data to the token then sends it to its nearest active
downstream neighbor (NADN). Each computer downstream will pass
the data on since the token is being used until the data reaches its

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recipient. The recipient will set two bits to indicate it received the data
and transmit the token and data. When the computer that sent the
data receives the package, it can verify that the data was received
correctly. It will remove the data from the token and pass the token to
its NADN.

A token ring network uses a multistation access unit (MAU) as a hub. It

may also be known as a Smart Multistation Access Unit (SMAU). A MAU
normally has ten ports. Two ports are Ring In (RI) and Ring Out (RO)
which allow multiple MAUs to be linked to each other. The other 8 ports
are used to connect to computers.

Ethernet

The IEEE 802.3 standard defines ethernet at the physical and data link
layers of the OSI network model. Most ethernet systems use the
following:

• Carrier-sense multiple-access with collision detection (CSMA/CD)

for controlling access to the network media.
• Use baseband broadcasts

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 • A method for packing data into data packets called frames
• Transmit at 10Mbps, 100Mbps, and 1Gbps.

Shared Star

In a star topology all stations are wired to a central wiring concentrator

called a hub. Similar to a bus topology, packets sent from one station
to another are repeated to all ports on the hub. This allows all stations
to see each packet sent on the network, but only the station a packet
is addressed to pays attention to it.

The diagram illustrates a star topology LAN -- which is a more robust

topology than the bus topology. In a star topology, each station is
connected to a central wiring concentrator, or hub, by an individual
length of twisted pair cable. The cable is connected to the station's NIC
at one end and to a port on the hub at the other. The hubs are placed
in wiring closets centrally located in a building.

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Shared LAN

A typical LAN configuration is configured according to the

physical infrastructure it is connecting. Users are grouped based on
their location in relation to the hub they are plugged into and how the
cable is run to the wiring closet. Segmentation is typically provided by
the router interconnecting each shared hub.
This type of segmentation does not group users according to
their workgroup association or need for bandwidth. Engineering users
can be plugged into the same hub as accounting and administration
users because of their respective physical locations. They share the
same segment and contend for the same bandwidth, although the
bandwidth requirements may vary greatly according to workgroup or
department.
Additionally, this segmentation requires that each hub connected to a
router port have a unique subnet address. This prevents a logical

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assignment of network addresses across the network campus resulting
in security issues.

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