Extreme BlackDiamond

Mon Oct 13 21:53:12 UTC 2003

On Mon, Oct 13, 2003 at 11:10:32PM +0200, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 13 Oct 2003 sthaug at nethelp.no 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 <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)