A Layer 2 switch is used to switch incoming frames from a 1000BASE-T port to a port connected to a 100Base-T network. Which method of memory buffering would work best for this task?
- port-based buffering
- level 1 cache buffering
- shared memory buffering
- fixed configuration buffering
Answers Explanation & Hints:
With shared memory buffering, the number of frames stored in the buffer is restricted only by the of the entire memory buffer and not limited to a single port buffer. This permits larger frames to be transmitted with fewer dropped frames. This is important to asymmetric switching, which applies to this scenario, where frames are being exchanged between ports of different rates. With port-based memory buffering, frames are stored in queues that are linked to specific incoming and outgoing ports making it possible for a single frame to delay the transmission of all the frames in memory because of a busy destination port. Level 1 cache is memory used in a CPU. Fixed configuration refers to the port arrangement in switch hardware. |