Layer 3 Switching Overview
All Catalyst 3550 Gigabit Ethernet switches contain the enhanced multilayer software image (EMI), which provides you with Layer 2 features, full Layer 3 routing, and advanced services. Catalyst 3550 Fast Ethernet switches give you the choice of the standard multilayer software image (SMI) or EMI installed. The SMI provides Layer 2 features and basic Layer 3 routing.
Briefly, when a router receives a packet, it looks at the Layer 3, or the Network layer, source and destination addresses to determine the path that the packet should take. A Layer 3 switch, besides having optimized hardware to pass data as fast as Layer 2 switches, can also make decisions on how to transmit traffic at Layer 3. The pattern matching and caching ...
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