Layer 2 vs Layer 3 connection

[olly ahmed]

Which one is better between layer 2 and layer 3 connection ?  Why corporates are willing to take layer 2 connectivity ?

[Venkatesh Perumal]

Please have a look on the below docs for clarity:

http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_1-2/switch_evolution.html

http://smallbiztrends.com/2013/09/osi-model-layer-networking.html

Regards,

-Do rate helpful posts.

[Ganesh Hariharan]

Which one is better between layer 2 and layer 3 connection ?  Why corporates are willing to take layer 2 connectivity ?

Hello ,

Both are having advatanges based on architecure requirement, if you want separet Layer 3 DC's then you are having separate ip subnets in both the DC and application are running in active-active mode for efficient use of resources.

But the session persistency cant be that efficent to manage in Layer 3 DC's and cluster extension in some vendors are not that sucessfull.

With Layer 2 design , You can have VLAN extended between DC's for cluster extension and efficient use of High availabilty of application in case of DR.

Hope it helps..

-GI

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[Joseph W. Doherty]

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Posting

Which is "better" is a "it depends" answer, but corporations are willing to use L2 because they may find L2 less expensive (often they are an Ethernet hand-off [today, so might be a L3 hand-off]) or they might find it easier to use L2 to tie together data centers where they want to extend VLANs between the two.