[NTLUG:Discuss] Ethernet Switches

[Dennis Myhand]

I would check with the manufacturer of the switch in question.  All switches I
know of will forward broadcasts.  That is why routers are used to segment
bradcast domains.  HTH Peace, Dennis in Victoria

Steve Baker wrote:

> I recollect
> hearing somewhere that some switches don't even support broadcast at all -
> or do it very slowly by sending the message consecutively to all the outputs
> instead of to all of them in parallel.
>
> Does anyone know if that's true?  And if so, whether there is a way to tell
> which switches support broadcast 'properly' and which either do it nastily
> or not at all?
>
> Right now, I'm only using a handful of machines - but what if I wanted to
> connect up (say) 200 machines and use broadcast to all of them in parallel?
> I'm betting there aren't too many 200 port *hubs* out there - can I cascade
> them?  Is this where a 'bridge' would be appropriate?
>
> Low latency and high bandwidth are important here - I'll be looking for a way
> to do this with 1GHz Ethernet too.
>
> (This is a *really* specialised Beowulf-like Linux application)
>
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