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Network Switches Grow Up

By Alice LaPlante

Once just hubs that directed network traffic, network switches have steadily gained intelligence. They can now help with user access control of applications and enable fault tolerance to prevent network downtime. This increased functionality not only makes the corporate network run better; it can relieve some of the administrative load on network administrators as well as other IT professionals.

"Enterprises can do much more with their existing equipment thanks to the increased sophistication and speed of switches," says Jim Kelton, president of Altius Information Technology Inc., an IT consulting firm based in Santa Ana, Calif., that specializes in performing network and security assessments. "And even as speeds go up -- we've seen them rise from 10 megabits to 100 megabits to 1 gigabit -- prices are coming down dramatically. As a result, we see companies rapidly upgrading to the higher-capacity switches."

"IT is very interested in this because many companies are building converged networks, putting IP and telephone traffic on the same network, and in general trying to enable various kinds of traffic using the same infrastructure," says Mary Petrosky, a network analyst based in San Mateo, Calif.

All On Top
The increased functionality is evident in that switches are no longer merely acting as Layer 2 and Layer 3 devices, but have moved up the network topology ladder to being Layer 4 and even Layer 7 devices. (article continues)

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