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Where a traditional router would have one, or at best a
few, Fast Ethernet ports, the VH-2402-L3 Layer 3
switch has 24 Fast Ethernet ports and optionally, 2
Gigabit Ethernet ports. Where a traditional router
would have one or two high-speed serial WAN
connections, the VH-2402-L3 relies upon a Fast
Ethernet port to connect to a separate device, which in
turn, connects the network to a WAN or the Internet.
The VH-2402-L3 can be thought of as 24 Fast Ethernet
Layer 2 switching domains with a wire-speed router
between each domain. It can be deployed in a network
between a traditional router and the intranetwork. The
traditional router and its associated WAN interface
would then handle routing between the intranetwork
and the WAN (the Internet, for example) while the
Layer 3 switch would handle routing within the LAN
(between the Fast Ethernet Layer 2 domains). Any
installed Layer 2 switches, and indeed the entire
subnetting scheme, would remain in place.
The VH-2402-L3 can also replace key traditional
routers for data centers and server farms, routing
between these locations and the rest of the network,
and providing 24 ports of Layer 2 switching
performance combined with wire-speed routing.
Backbone routers can also be replaced with the
VH-2402-L3 via optional Gigabit Ethernet ports on the
VHIM uplink modules. Routers that service WAN
connections would remain in place, but would now be
removed from the backbone and connected to the
VH-2402-L3 via an Ethernet/Fast Ethernet port. The
backbone itself could be migrated to Gigabit Ethernet,
or faster technologies as they become available.
Policy services can then be introduced (or enhanced)
in the backbone infrastructure and maintained
throughout the network – even to the desktop. With a