As we mentioned before, bridges used software to create the CAM table. With switches, we have Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) that can build and maintain the MAC table. One thing you should keep in mind is that switches are faster than routers because they only concentrate on layer 2 addressing; they do not deal with any of the layer 3 protocols. That is true only for layer 2 switches; as we know, we have layer 3 switches that have routing capabilities if turned on.
Switches look at the frame's hardware address to see if it's going to forward, flood, or drop the frame. Let's take a look at four main important advantages that layer 2 switching gives us:
- Hardware-based bridging (ASICs)
- Wired speed
- Low latency
- Low cost
Using layer 2 switching is much faster and better for segmenting a network. It only reads the frame encapsulating...
