Unit 3: Chapter 4
CONNECTING DEVICES AND
VIRTUAL LAN
-POOJA PATIL
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Connecting Devices
◼ Five connecting devices
◼ Repeaters
◼ Hubs
◼ Bridges
◼ Switches
◼ Routers
◼ Gateway
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Repeaters
◼ A physical layer device the acts on bits not on frames or
packets
◼ Can have two or more interfaces
◼ When a bit (0,1) arrives, the repeater receives it and
regenerates it, the transmits it onto all other interfaces
◼ Repeaters do not implement any access method
◼ If any two nodes on any two connected segments
transmit at the same time collision will happen
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Figure 15.3 Function of a repeater
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Figure 15.2 A repeater connecting two segments of a LAN
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Hubs
◼ Acts on the physical layer
◼ Operate on bits rather than frames
◼ Also called multiport repeater
◼ Connection to the hub consists of two pairs of twisted pair wire one
for transmission and the other for receiving.
◼ Hub receives a bit from an adapter and sends it to all the other adapters
without implementing any access method.
◼ does not do filtering (forward a frame into a specific destination or
drop it) just it copy the received frame onto all other links
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Figure 15.4 A hierarchy of hubs
A hub is a multi-port repeater, used in star-wired LANs
(Ethernet).
Because of the amount of traffic and collisions, hubs can
only be used in small network configurations.
15.7
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Figure 16.4 Hubs
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Bridges
◼ Acts on the data link layer (MAC address level)
◼ Used to divide (segment) the LAN into smaller LANs segments, or to
connect LANs that use identical physical and data link layers protocol
(see figure in next slide)
◼ Bridge does not send the received frame to all other interfaces like
hubs and repeaters, but it performs filtering which means:
◼ Whether a frame should be forwarded to another interface that
leads to the destination or dropped
◼ This is done by a bridge table (forwarding table) that contains entries
for the nodes on the LAN
◼ The bridge table is initially empty and filled automatically by
learning from frames movements in the network
◼ An entry in the bridge table consists of : Node LAN (MAC)
Address, Bridge Interface to which the node is connected to,
the record creation time
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Bridges
Connecting two or more LAN segments
together
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Figure 15.5 A bridge connecting two LANs
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Switches
▪ N-Port bridge where N is equal to number of stations
▪ Usually used to connect individual computers not LANs like bridge
◼ Allows more than one device connected to the switch directly to
transmit simultaneously
◼ Can operates in Full-duplex mode (can send and receive frames at the
same time over the same interface)
◼ Performs MAC address recognition and frame forwarding in
hardware (bridge in software)
◼ Two types :
◼ Store-and-forward: switch receives the whole a frame on the input
line, buffers it briefly , performs error checking, then routes it to
the appropriate output line (similar to bridge). Buffering will cause
some delay.
◼ Cut-through: based on the fact that the destination address
appears at the beginning of the MAC frame, so once the address is
recognized the frame is directly sent to the appropriate output line
if the output buffer is empty (no need to buffer it). ➔ no buffering
delay ➔ NO ERROR CHECKING
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Routers
◼ Operates at network layer = deals with packets not frames
◼ Connect LANs and WANs with similar or different protocols
together
◼ Acts like normal stations on a network, but have more than one
network address (an address to each connected network)
◼ Deals with global address ( network layer address (IP)) not local
address (MAC address)
◼ Routers Communicate with each other and exchange routing
information
◼ Determine best route using routing algorithm by special software
installed on them
◼ Forward traffic if information on destination is available
otherwise discard it (not like a switch or bridge)
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Figure 15.11 Routers connecting independent LANs and WANs
Routers
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15.3 Virtual LANs
3 Collision domains
3 Broadcast domains
If we want to move computers from group1 to group3, then rewiring
(physical replacement) has to be done
What is the alternative solution??
VLAN: Virtual (logical) Local Area Network : Local
Area Network configured by software not by physical
wiring
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Figure 16.15 A switch using VLAN software
VLAN1: Ports 1,2,5,7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
VLAN2: Ports 3,4,6
VLAN3: Ports 8,9,10
Separate broadcast domain ➔
separate network
▪Using the Virtual LAN technology will allow grouping computers
logically instead of physically.
▪VLAN divides the physical LAN into several Logical LANs
called VLANs
▪ Switch maintains a look up table to know to which LAN a
machine belongs to.
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Advantages Of VLAN
◼ Reduce cost and installation time:
◼ Instead of physically moving a station to another segment or another
switch, it can be moved by software.
◼ Increase security:
◼ A group of users needing a high security can be put into a VLAN so
that NO users outside the VLAN can communicate with them.
◼ Stations belong to the same group can send broadcast messages that
will NOT be received by users in others VLAN groups
◼ Creating Virtual Workgroups
◼ Stations located at physically different locations can be added easily to
the same broadcast domain so that they can send broadcast messages to
one another.
◼ EXAMPLE: people from different departments working on the same
project
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