In large organizations, your wireless network will have multiple APs and some may
even be in different buildings. The nature of wireless networking is that it is
constantly changing APs are added and policies are modified. In order to be
compliant with these changes, A Wireless controller is used. The wireless controller
is capable of centralized management of all WAPs through a single interface. The
wireless controller allows you to add access points, manage and configure all access
points and monitor activity on each AP. In earlier editions, we discussed Standard
packet filtering firewalls. While these are effective at the Network Layer they cannot
examine the contents of a packet and discriminate between authorized authentic
traffic and potentially malicious traffic. The Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) can
examine packets up to OSI Layer 7 making it capable of providing protection up to
the Application Layer. NGFW is considered a component of a sound UTM
environment. Since the Layer 7 firewall can examine application data it is sometimes
referred to as a content filter. This makes everything so much better. Within the
many years I’ve worked in technical support along with the creation of portal
assistance for customers, I learned how important a load balancer or multilayer
switch was for a business to function smoothly with online support. We live in a
world now, where technology is leading everything and the last thing any company
or school needs is an unreliable server. In the event a server fails the other servers
connected to the load balancer will continue to function properly. The load balancer
ensures a high availability and reliability through sending requests only to servers
that are online. A multilayer switch provides multiple functions on a network level.
The traffic is forwarded accordingly by the MAC addresses. It’s important to know
how a load balancer operates, sometimes it is the key to determining if a set of
servers can be overloaded and redirect them effectively. It’s important to know that
a multilayer switch is a network device with the capability to operate at higher
layers of the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection). The multilayer switch in addition
can function as a router with great speed. We need advanced network devices such
as domain name service servers, multilayer switches, and load balancers to make
everyday use of computers and the internet more user friendly. Domain name service
servers make browsing or searching the internet easier because you do not need to
know the specific IP address of a website. DNS servers use records like quad-A to
find the specific IP address for a website so all we have to type is its name.
Multilayer switches are like a normal switch, but it has the capability of routing.
Unlike routers, multilayer switches offer more collision domains for better
performance and operate on the OSI layer 3. Layer 3 MLS’s use application-specific
integrated circuitry for routing instead of microprocessors like a normal layer 2
switch. And load balancers are used to help distribute the demand on servers by
sending multiple incoming packets to more then one server using the same IP
address. If I understand this correctly an example of this could be a store like Wal-
Mart or Target having customers paying for transactions using debit or credit cards.
The load balancer would be used by both the store and the credit institute. The
stores would utilize it by processing all of the requests from several check outs
trying to process payments at the same time, and the credit institute would use load
balancers by sending the incoming payment requests to more than one server to help
with the congestion and to help prevent collisions or crashes. A multilayer switch
can provide multiple functions on a network. It can act as a switch, so it can
forward traffic based on MAC addresses. But it can also act as a router, which
means it's making forwarding decisions based on the Layer 3 addresses that are
passing through this device. A Layer 2 switch works with MAC addresses only and
does not care about IP address or any items of higher layers. A Layer 3 switch, or
multilayer switch, can do all the job that a Layer 2 switch does. Additionally, it can
do static routing and dynamic routing. The major difference between the packet
switching operation of a router and that of a layer 3 switch is the actual
implementation. In general-purpose routers, packet switching is usually implemented
in software that runs on a microprocessor, whereas a layer 3 switch performs the
same operation using dedicated application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) hardware.
For example, requests from the same source IP address are directed to the same
application server each time. Stickiness can also be based on SSL IDs, and some
content switches can even use cookies to provide this functionality. Well, prior to
reading this material, I had thought of a multilayer switch as a switch with for 4 or
5 switches combined into one switch as we used switch A and switch B as the
primary routing switches in our stores. it would be like a device is connected to
switch A, card 3, port 20. However per the reading, that is not the case - as a
multilayer switch is like an ordinary network switch but provides routing. It operates
at Layer 3 (routing) while still providing individual collision domains. As far as load
balancers, they can actually send data, or incoming packets to multiple machines
hidden behind one IP address. Again with our stores, we also did online sales, so
instead of handling all the sales with one server - if that server goes down - sales
stop. So having multiple servers handle all the sales with load balancing enabled -
one server goes down and the sales continue with those sales being processed on
other servers, which in turn you never lose any sales. There are multiple uses for a
load balancer and multilayer switch. I will first start by giving the definitions of
each and proceed from there by interjecting examples of their usage. A load balancer
acts a a traffic cop, it sits in front of the server so speaking. routing client request
across all servers capable of fulfilling those request in a manner that maximizes
speed and capacity utilization and ensures that no one server is overworked, which
could lead to degraded performance. An example of a load balancer at work is if a
single server goes down the load balancer automatically redirects traffic to the
remaining online servers. It also provides flexibility to add or subtract servers as
demand dictates. A multilayer switch is a network device that has the ability to
operate at higher levels in the OSI layers. It can perform the functions of a regular
switch as well as that of a router, at incredible speeds. Multilayer switches use
ASIC hardware circuits to perform router functions. This differs from typical routers,
which reside on a microprocessor and use applications running on it to perform their
routing operations. A load balancer is a device that helps with site traffic. The given
example of an ordering website and how the traffic can vary on how many are
ordering and the size of each order that is being placed. A load balancer would help
regulate the traffic kind of like a real-life traffic signal does.A multilayer switch has
the routing capabilities on layer 2 like a switch but it also has application-specific
integrated circuit (ASIC) which is for packet routing. This gives you a powerful
device that can perform as two devices within one on 2 different layers. The
purpose of a Load Balancer is to sit between client devices and servers, receiving
and then sending all of the incoming requests to a capable/available server/servers. It
sounds lika a Load Balancer takes numerous things into consideration while making
it's decision on where to send a request. I am new to networking, but I find it to
be an intriguing topic. A Multilayer Switch can do the same things as a switch, as
well as that of a router, but at faster speeds. A Load Balancer is useful is in
distributing a big number of incoming HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) requests
to the various servers and a Multilayer Switch can act as a load balancer by
forwarding packet traffic to networks. One example of how a load balancer is used
is by reducing the amount of stress on a server by evening out all of the incomg
and outgoing to lighten the load. I picture this happening in an office building to
help even out the traffic flow between the computers. Like I said, I am a very new
to this but find the topic interesting to learn about. The Matrix movie usually leaves
a strong impression on its viewers. Some characters seem to have a meaning that
extends beyond their role in the movie. One such unique character is the Oracle,
whose job in the Matrix could be applied (by going wildly outside the box) to
networking. Layer 2 of the OSI is prompted with a multilayer switch. Switches are
used to designate traffic flow using hardware methods. Multilayer switches give out
high-speed scalability and low latency. Multilayer switching makes changes or
decisions based on Port numbers in the transport layer, protocol field, IP addresses,
data link frames, and the MAC address in the data link frame. Multilayer switching
allows admins to collapse the network utilizing less layers and continues the same
level of redundancy. Multilayer switches are a cheaper per- port cost than using a
regular router. This enhances dynamic protocols and ACl support. There are various
types of switches such as packet, circuit, multilayer, virtual, circuit, Wide Area
Network (WAN), and Local Area Network. Multilayer is a process to improve the
regular method for processes the IP Packets, but depending on the admin different
approaches are taken with either method. It is now a preference but the most
common and best working practice is now the multilayer switching, but most are not
utilizing all advanced settings on the available network presented. The purpose of a
load balancer is to distribute network and application traffic efficiently across
multiple servers on a server farm, The purpose of the multilayer switch is to
perform the functions of a switch as well as a router and very, very, fast speeds. it
is important to be able to distinguish between the two because they do not do the
same types of things. One is used to regulate the network, the other essentially
creates the traffic. For example, a multilayer switch works as a switch and router to
send the information that needs to to be transmitted to the load balancer to regulate
and and distribute the required transmission to its destination. IDS monitors network
traffic for malicious software and intrusions. It watches for what is normal and what
is out of order and will flag anything that isn’t normal. Once it flags it, you can
allow it or deny it. An example would be like employees all logging into their
systems the way they’re supposed to, while someone tries to gain backdoor interest.
The IDS will catch it and flag it for approval. Proxy servers act as the middleman.
On one side is the user and the other side is the network. The user inputs the
request, the proxy receives the request and then makes the request to the network.
Once the network has responded, the proxy will deliver the response back to the
user. A use for this is filtering content. I’ve actually used proxy servers before to
circumvent website blocking in high school (it’s not what you think, honest).
Coincidentally, proxy servers eventually stopped working at the school computers,
and I think that may have been a product of the IDS, which I never considered
until this very moment. The purposes of these advanced networking devices can vary
in many ways. The biggest thing they do is cut down on network traffic and help
keeps speeds optimum. I'm glad this came up, at my employer we recently had a
problem with ASIC chips failing. At that time I didn't really know what an ASIC
chip did. Now it makes more sense. The equipment I work on is a digital printer
(Commercial) and this specific one has 512 nozzles divided into 4 sections of 128
nozzles. When the ASIC chip fails, it does not send any data to some or all of the
nozzles in that individual section of the printhead. Since the ASIC chip directs
information to a specific address this makes complete sense. As for Load Balancing
to me it sounds like a toll booth for a two lane tunnel from a major highway. 8
lanes down to 1 lane, each vehicle (packet) goes through a different booth, where it
is approved to pass and then released to go as to not back up traffic and continue
optimal flow. A load balancer provides balancing of network loads across multiple
devices for redundancy and better optimization. Redundancy provided by a load
balancer would work by sharing traffic across multiple devices with similar functions
so in the event of a device failure service will not be interrupted. Another instance
of redundancy would be the use of multiple internet connections, effectively giving
you one larger connection that operates the same as an individual connection but
with the benefit of having more than one in the event of a failure.
Multilayer switches provide switching in addition to routing on a lower level of the
OSI model. Multilayer switches can also effectively direct traffic to where it needs
to be instead of having an actual router involved in the process. The purpose built
hardware can handle these tasks much faster than a traditional router would be able
to, and thus provides faster network access and lower latency. Switching and routing
at the same device at a faster rate can reduce hardware costs by essentially replacing
part of what the network would have used in the router, which can lower costs by
reducing the size of the router needed. Switching and routing in the same step also
reduces latency which improves network performance. Multilayer switches and load
balancers are network devices that help move network data. The purpose of a
multilayer switch, also known as Layer 3 switch, is to operate as both a switch and
a router. It gives you the best of both worlds in one device. One key difference is
that a multilayer switch contains application-specific integrated circuit hardware.
The purpose of a load balancer essentially distributes incoming traffic amongst your
servers. Rules on how traffic is distributed can be set based on your needs and what
works best for you. Amazon is the perfect example. Think of how many people
every second order something from Amazon. Billions of people use Amazon which
means it needs to have the right technology to handle a ton of traffic or else servers
could freeze. A load balancer would help prevent this.
It’s important to distinguish between them because of their functions. A load
balancer is used at a bigger capacity such as Amazon because of the number of
servers needed to handle the traffic. Whereas a multilayer switch is more common
with corporations that have many users that need to access the same networks. A
load balancer is used with multiple servers to help provide support in case there is
an error or a failure with a server. The load balancer can help provide access to
web servers and databases, having the balancer ensures that the fault protection
should there be a problem with one server it can use the other servers that are
connected to continue to function. Looking further into a load balancer I found that
it can be used as an SSL endpoint providing encryption and removing if from the
servers which can help with speeding up the servers. Using a multilayer switch or
MLS is beneficial because it operates on multiple layers 2 though 7. It operates as a
switch and router; it also examines data packets then forwards them. The multilayer
switch differs from a regular router because it uses application-specific integrated
circuit (ASIC) to perform routing functions while a router uses a microprocessor.
From my understanding having the MLS seems to be an efficient piece to have on
a network to make it more streamline since it and handle a lot of the layers and
from what I read it can look deeper into protocol description. The use of advanced
networking devices is to optimize performance in the network. Most of the functions
provided by these devices can be handled by a router or switch, but on a larger
network it’s better to let dedicated devices take care of tasks to keep the network
running smoothly. If it were all up to the router, then network speeds would
decrease. They also usually allow more options for that task than a router or switch
would offer. One such device is an encryption appliance. These devices offer more
encryption options since encryption takes a lot of processing power it would make
sense to let a specific unit handle it. Another advanced networking device is the
packet shaper. These devices help regulate network traffic by delaying certain types
of packets to ensure performance stays up. The packets are specified by the
administrator to make sure the data you want gets prioritized. It’s important to
distinguish between advanced networking devices because they may look similar and
do very different things. Being able to tell which one you need will let you know
you have the right equipment for the job. The important to know the different in a
load balancer and a multilayer switch what there are used for and when you need to
use them. When using a load balancer, you might have Several servers on the same
network. The load balancer will determine what server to send the workload to.
What the load balancer does is sit in front for the servers like a cop saying sent the
workload to this server or to this one making sure there is not traffic jam. When it
comes to using a multilayer switch is going to work on Several layers of the OSI
making the data rate run a wire speed. A load balance can be software base or
hardware base. a multilayer switch is only hardware base. With a multilayer switch
once you set it is plug and play to add more workstations on. the big problem with
a multilayer switch is the Security measurements are a little bit different in the
multilayer switch compared to a load balancing switch. The first one i like was the
Multilayer switch, The MLS (multi layer switch) operates similar to a network
switch however it always has built in routing which means it operates on layer 3
where routing would take place and still provides 24 collision points. The main
difference between this MLS and a router is how it operates, a router uses a
microprocessor and the MLS uses ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit).
The second thing that caught my eye was the Encryption devices/ Encryption
Gateway. alot of other things can provide this service like some routers do, However
it puts a load on their processors when preforming multiple jobs and a pure
encryption device will provide a more secure and stronger encryption. you would
send things like email and other things through your encryption device to allow a
more secure communication. Load balancer is when you provide a large scale of
services, such as a Web servers or Databases you will have multiple servers and use
a load balancer to provide fault tolerance should a server fail, the other servers
connected to the load balancer will continue service. Also in the load balancer you
will also configure as an SSL endpoint taking the encryption overhead away from
the servers and increasing their efficiency. Load balancer can also cache information
requests and provide the cached information to any client making the same requests.
A multilayer switch is a network device that has the ability to operate at higher
layers of the OSI reference model, unlike the Data Link Layer (DLL) traditionally
used by switches. A multilayer switch can perform the functions of a switch as well
as that of a router at incredibly fast speeds.
The most important thing about a multilayer switch is one device ---- a switch and
a router. Which means it's forwarding decisions on the Layer 3 addresses that are
passing through this device. It's often referred to as a Layer 3 switch. For the load
balancer one of the most important things to know about its just not one device like
the multilayer switch. The load balancer has multiple servers at one time and it's
monitoring all the servers. But if one server begins to slow down, it can balance the
load across the remaining servers. Load balancer will also provide a TCP offload.
The way you know you are communicating to a device with TCP there's the normal
three way TCP handshake that has to occur for every session. Well I am not
familiar with these terms so I had to look the definition up. A load balancer is
defined as splitting incoming requests across multiple servers so they appear to be
one more powerful server. Multilayer switch is a switch that operates at multiple
layers of the OSI Model, normally 2 tradition layer. So as far as I can tell a
multilayer switch seems to be the most important as it allows traffic to be sent only
where it is needed. So it seems the multilayer switch is great for VLAN
segmentation and better network performance. Like I said this is kind of foreign to
me since I am learning all this for the first time. This is just the basics of what I
could find and kind of break down to explain. When it comes to a load balancer
and a multilayer the point of this is help with the performance on a device. A load
balancer is when a disturbing a series of tasks to allow the overall process to run
smoothly. A multilayer is when a computer network switches from a lower layer to
a higher OSI that provides extra functions.
There is a difference between a multilayer and a load balancer, well a multilayer
determines when the network needs to switch to a higher layer. When a load
balancer stays on a layer like 4 or 7 and allows them to run more smoothly without
crashing.
A load balancer would be used on a website like Amazon, where there is a a lot of
traffic going in and out of this website. With the amount of customer going on the
website something is about to crash however, with a load balancer even if someone
crashes of the site others can still use it.A multilayer is when traffic off a network
needs to run at a faster speed. That would be like at a office or school. In order
for everyone to do their online work a computer network would have to operate
faster. Examples being that a network switches from layer 2 to 4 because that
computer needs to run at a faster speed. A multilayer switch performs the Layer 2
MAC address direction and additionally performs the Layer 3 IP based routing
functions. Switching is still performed at Layer 2. Routing takes place at Layer 3. A
multilayer switch can perform the functions of a switch as well as that of a router
at incredibly fast speeds. A switch traditionally inspects frames, while a multilayer
switch inspects deeper into the protocol description unit (at packet or even at
segment level). Multilayer switches use ASIC hardware circuits to perform routing
functions. This differs from typical routers, which reside on a microprocessor and
use applications running on it to perform their routing operations.If you are providing
large scale services like Web servers or Databases the availability of your service is
a primary concern. You will have multiple servers and use a Load balancer to
provide fault tolerance should a server fail, the other servers connected to the load
balancer will continue service. The load balancer can also be configured as an SSL
endpoint taking the encryption overhead away from the servers and increasing their
efficiency. Load balancers can also cache information requests and provide the
cached information to any client making the same request. Load Balancing is where
a network distributes tasks and resources over multiple systems making each process
more efficient. Rather than having one system being bottle necked by its resources
load balancing can distribute the load in order to make the process happen faster
than if it was just the one system running the process. A multi layer switch
combines multiple layers into one process such as layers 2, 3 and 4 which will
speed up the process of the network transmission. The importance of distinguishing
between them is because one distributes resources for processing while one combines
the OSI layers for networking speed. Another nice feature is that the multi layer
switch is configured automatically. One example of a load balancing system being
used is on a website that requires high amounts of processing because of a sale on
the site. the user connects to a website which in turn connects to the load balancing
system and the loan balancing system distributes the web back end to one system to
process and to another system for store and merchant processing. these processes in
turn connect to the database for completion. After reading between the two devices I
will say that these devices are enhancers or contributes to the network. The best
way that I can put it into my own words these two devices give the network they
are on better efficiency. It’s important to be able to distinguish between the two is
because they are used for differently. Yes they improve and help with the efficiency
of the network but they have two different roles within the network. The Load
Balancer is used to improve the amount of concurrent users on the network and
being able to have great stability while having many users using that network at
once. Multilayer Switches are able to operate more than just the level 2 layer which
is much more efficient than your regular network switch. Multilayer switches also
have functions of that of a router and while having the ability to do multiple task
this doesn’t slow it down. It can perform these functions at high speeds. Multilayer
switches also inspects deeper into the the protocol description.
