A Switch also has multiple physical ports and can be used to interconnect multiple
LANs. Another way to look at it is that a Switch has a node/device on its own segment.
Broadcast and multicast (forwarding an incoming frame to a set of select destinations)
are also supported.
14 A note on IEEE nomenclature: In the IEEE, if a standard is a standalone document that will not be
incorporated into another document, then the letter(s) following the period is an uppercase letter. The
documents using lowercase letters are changes that will be incorporated into the main document.
For example, 802.3ah includes changes to many of the sections of the 802.3 document; it also adds an
additional section. At some point in the future, 802.3 will be republished with the 802.3ah reference and
changes incorporated. At that point, 802.3ah will no longer be available.
10 Chapter 1
Connecting Bridges and Switches Bridges and switches can be connected to string
together multiple LANs, in effect building a bigger LAN, thus leveraging and sharing
the resources on all the subtending LANs. This approach is commonly employed in
campus networks and even in smaller metro networks.
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