>I think you may be a bit confused on the technology. Switch routers are
>not quite as revolutionary as you might think. In fact, these devices
>are more of an evolution of existing router technology. The association
>with the word "switch" is more marketing spin to emphasize the increase
>in raw throughput these devices can provide. If they called it "a fast
>router", people may not be willing to shell out the $$$ to buy them. ;)
Some deserve to be called switch routers more than others. Take
Cisco's NetFlow feature cards (I'm a Cisco bigot.) They have the
ability to have the initial connection go all the way up to the
traditional router to set up the "connection", and then individual
switches are able to route without bothering the real router. So
for example, if you have VLAN 1 and VLAN 2 in the same chassis,
and have to machines that want to talk between them. This
means that after the connection is setup, packets don't have to
leave that chassis, and are supposed to go much faster. I
think of this as "short-cut" routing.
Note that this is most likely a LOSS of security, not an improvement.
For example, access-lists only get cunsulted during setup, and
not during short-cut routing. I was able to give a (non-useful)
example of an access-list that this feature would "break" to
a Cisco product manager.
Ryan
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