An Ethernet switch is essentially a multi-interface bridge, right?

Ethernet switch is essentially a multi-interface bridge, usually with more than a dozen interfaces, which is very different from repeaters and hubs working in the physical layer. Each interface of an Ethernet switch is directly connected to a single host or another Ethernet switch and usually works in full duplex mode. Ethernet switches also have parallelism, that is, multiple pairs of interfaces can be connected at the same time, so that multiple pairs of hosts can communicate at the same time (while bridges can only analyze and forward one frame at a time). Hosts communicating with each other are exclusive transmission media, and there is no conflict in transmitting data. The interface of Ethernet switch also has a memory, which can buffer input frames when the output port is busy. Therefore, if two hosts connected to an Ethernet switch send frames to another host at the same time, when the interface of this host is busy, the interfaces of the two hosts sending frames will temporarily store the received frames and then send them out later. Ethernet switch is a plug-and-play device, and its internal frame exchange table (also called address table) is automatically established step by step through self-learning algorithm.

Ethernet switch adopts special switch structure chip, which is forwarded by hardware, and its forwarding rate is much faster than that of bridge with software forwarding. The performance of Ethernet switches far exceeds that of ordinary hubs, and the price is not expensive, which makes the hubs working in the physical layer gradually withdraw from the market. For the traditional * * * Ethernet with 10Mbit/s, if * * has 10 users, the average bandwidth occupied by each user is only1mbit/s. If these hosts are connected by Ethernet switches, the bandwidth from each interface to the host is still10 mbit/s. When switching from * * * shared bus Ethernet to switched Ethernet, the software, hardware and adapters of all access devices do not need to be changed. Ethernet switches generally have interfaces with multiple rates, such as 10 Mbit/s, 100 Mbit/s and 1Gbit/s, which greatly facilitates users in different scenarios.