Layer 3 Switching And Routing; Switching Hardware - Dell DX6000 Getting Started Manual

2.1.2. Layer 3 Switching and Routing

A router or a layer 3 switch routes network packets between subnets. A router segregates network
traffic by filtering packets based on the subnet to which they are addressed. This segregation is
important so that DX Storage nodes have predicable network bandwidth for their use and so that
their multicast and unicast traffic doesn't interfere with computers on the rest of the network.

2.1.3. Switching Hardware

When selecting Ethernet switching hardware, consider that many client workstations have 100Mbps
network interfaces and it might not be cost effective to connect these workstations to Gigabit ports.
Additionally, the operating systems and applications running on these workstations might be unable
to effectively utilize more than 100Mbps of bandwidth.
The following figure shows a network architecture where workstations, enterprise servers, and DX
Storage nodes are isolated on appropriately sized switches.
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December 2010