Difference between ROUTER and SWITCH

A router is an electronic device in computer networking that forwards data packets to their destinations, based on their addresses (IP,MAC). The work a router does it called routing, which is somewhat like switching, but a router is different from a switch. The latter is simply a device to connect machines to form a LAN.




A switch is a computer networking device that connects network segments.

The term commonly refers to that processes and routes data at the (layer 3 and above) are often referred to as Layer 3 switches or a network bridgedata link layer (layer 2) of the OSI model. Switches that additionally process data at the network layermultilayer switches.

The term network switch does not generally encompass unintelligent or passive network devices such as hubs and repeaters.

Consequently, these two differ in several ways:

• Router understand IP head, and switch deal with MAC address
• Router has its own IP address(es), and switch don’t
• Router has an operating system running inside, and allow administrator to login into the system.
• Router has an operating system running inside, and allow administrator to login into the system.
• You (network administrator) must configure routing table to make it works.
• You (network administrator) must configure routing table to make it works
• Switch is usually ready to use.
• Router has routing software running inside, including route discovery protocol.
• Routing software know how to deal with different IP packet, such as ICMP and other IP option functionality. Switches don’t.
• Multiple routers can be connected together as a network.
• You can’t directly multiple switches together to form a large network.