A router interface can have one or more sub-interfaces.
It stands out mainly for allowing to take full advantage of very few ports of our network devices. Router-on-a-Stick is one of the most important concepts when it comes to networks. A router refers to the target IP address instead of its MAC address, thus it generally provides more functionality than mere packet routing, such as IP address assignment (DHCP) and firewall filtering.Įxcept for the three major differences concerning layer 3 switch vs router, some other aspects are summarized in the following chart to help distinguish layer 3 switch from router. The same applies to VLAN 200, the gateway IP address is 192.168.2.1. the border router for inter-Vlan routing (router on a stick) add the ip. Working Principle – Layer 3 switch looks at the MAC address of the destination host and sends the frame only to that recipient. With DHCP enabled, a network device without IP address will interact with the. Moreover, routers were devices that connected the LAN to the WAN and switches were just LAN devices. While a router have more options like SDH, SONET, E1/T1 etc.
Interfaces - Another difference regarding a layer 3 switch vs router is that a Layer 3 switch is limited in interfaces it supported (usually just Ethernet for RJ45 and single mode/multimode fiber).
So layer 3 switch is most used to support routing between VLANs. Additionally, designed specifically for use on intranets, a layer 3 switch usually has no WAN ports and features a traditional router usually gets.
The hardware inside a layer 3 switch blends that of traditional switches and routers, improving some of a router’s software logic with integrated circuit hardware to offer better performance for LANs. Hardware - The key difference between layer 3 switch vs router lies in the hardware. Like traditional router, a layer 3 switch can also be configured to support routing protocols such as RIP, OSPF, and EIGRP.
Layer 3 switches are thus able to segregate ports into separate VLANs and perform the routing between them. layer 3 switch enable packets switching by inspecting both their IP addresses and their MAC addresses. Layer 3 Switch Vs Router: Similarities and DifferencesĪ layer 3 switch is both a switch and a router: it can be regarded as a router with multiple Ethernet ports and with switching function.