New Training: Differentiate Between Switching Mechanisms

In this 8-video skill, CBT Nuggets trainer Jeff Kish teaches you about the many mechanisms of switching. Gain an understanding of CAM and TCAM tables, the difference between process switching and CEF switching, distributed forwarding, and more. Watch this new Cisco training.

Watch the full course: Cisco CCNP Enterprise Core

This training includes:

• 8 videos

• 37 minutes of training

You’ll learn these topics in this skill:

• Intro

• CAM Tables

• TCAM Tables

• Routing Information Base (RIB)

• Process and Fast Switching

• CEF and FIB

• Centralized and Distributing Switching

• Review and Quiz

What's the Difference Between Fast Switching and Process Switching?

Switches are one of the most fundamental components of any data center architecture, responsible for transmitting data packets to and from different network-connected devices in a given data center or within a network in any of today's modern offices. As organizations have begun to send more and more data within a network, network architecture has had to continually improve the process for how data packets are transmitted within a network. To address this growing need, network switch architecture has evolved to transmit data in more effective ways that enhance transmission speeds while maintaining data integrity to address this growing need.

Process Switching is known to be an older standard of transmitting data packets between switches, sending and receiving packets at slower speeds. When a data packet is sent to a switch enabled by the Process Switching architecture, the switch will process the incoming data packet and move the data packet to memory. This process exhibits a high compute cost due to the processing overhead of moving that data to memory.

Fast Switching, in comparison, is a much faster process for analyzing and storing incoming data packets. Fast Switching works on the principle of analyzing and storing the first data packet in a transmission in the cache. By using this fast-access cache memory, subsequent data packets can be routed to their proper target with higher speed and data integrity than the traditional Process Switching methodology.