Anyone who knows industrial switches knows that industrial switches are divided into access layer industrial switches, aggregation layer industrial switches, and core layer industrial switches. Today, the editor of Feichang Technology will explain these three types of industrial switches in detail. If you are interested, let's take a look!
First of all, the core-layer industrial switches all adopt a chassis-based modular design. At present, the 1000BASE-T modules that are equipped with them have basically been designed. The purchase of the core-layer industrial switches is not discussed in this article. The industrial Ethernet switches supporting 1000BASE-T at the access layer are basically fixed-port industrial switches, mainly with 10/100Mbps ports, and provide 1000BASE-T uplink ports in fixed ports or expansion slots. Convergence layer 1000BASE-T industrial switches have two designs, chassis type and fixed port type, which can provide multiple 1000BASE-T ports, and generally can also provide other forms of ports such as 1000BASE-X. The access layer and the convergence layer industrial switches together constitute a complete small and medium LAN solution.
Secondly, according to OSI's 7-layer network model, industrial switches can be divided into second-tier industrial switches, third-tier industrial switches, fourth-tier industrial switches, etc., up to the seventh-tier industrial switches. The second-tier industrial switches that work based on MAC addresses are the most common and are used in the network access layer and the convergence layer. The third-tier industrial switches based on IP address and protocol exchange are generally used in the core layer of the network, and a small amount are also used in the convergence layer. Some layer 3 industrial switches also have layer 4 switching functions, which can judge the target port based on the protocol port information of the data frame. Industrial switches above the fourth layer are called content-based industrial switches, which are mainly used in Internet data centers and are beyond the scope of this article.
In addition, according to the manageability of industrial switches, it can be divided into manageable industrial switches and unmanageable industrial switches. The difference between them lies in the support for network management protocols. Manageable industrial switches are convenient for network monitoring, but the cost is relatively high. Large and medium-sized networks should choose manageable industrial switches at the convergence layer. At the access layer, it depends on the application needs. The core layer industrial switches are all manageable industrial switches.
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