Switching is practically invisible (and occurs at layer 2 of the OSI model) and generally not an issue unless you want to create a vlan, or alter the flow of data traffic for some reason. But hey, we gotta cover it because it’s a part of networking, and the switch has greatly improved networking speeds. Also, because there really isn’t much to switching (there shouldn’t be for an IT professional) we squeeze in protocols this week!
Learn to switch and protocol
·Watch the LinkedIn Learning video on switches:
Exploring the switch and the network topology in the course: Learning Cisco CLI Switch Configuration
·Research the terms: NetBIOS, WinSock, HTTP, Port 21, TFTP, Port 443, Local Area Network, VLAN
·Find a list of all of the most commonly used ports and find out which services they are linked to. You can usually search for this and find images that should lay it out for you very nicely.
·Plan on which services you would expect to find running in your project.
Select a switch for the project
Search for some major switch manufacturers and find the differences between models. Select several models depending on where they go in your project.
oHint – You don’t want to pay for a 24-port Gigabit switch if a room only has two computers that are used for browsing purposes! Similarly, you don’t want to put a 4-port switch in a room that is expected to be turned into a computer lab. Include some expandability into the project, but be realistic.
Open Packet Tracer and place some switches down and start playing with them.
oAdvanced students – Pretend you are networking in the late 1990s and switches were not yet common. Try to network a bunch of computers using hubs, and then try a number of different layouts to try and reduce collisions.
§Thankfully collisions are not an issue like they used to be. If you are interested in learning more about it check out the following link:
Network Basics Overview Article and this one Network Switching Tutorial
Update your project using switches configured correctly. This is really just making sure you drag and drop something more suitable then what you guessed at before and started with, don’t panic as it is easier than it sounds.
For your task, submit a list of protocols that would be running on your project network, and if you decided to change the ports, please specify.
·Name the switch in your project layout as the one you found, if it not available in Packet Tracer.
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