Layer 3 routing

[Ambrish Kumar Pandey]

Can we do routing from Layer 3 switch to Wan routers??

as per my knowledge if we enable the ip routing & configure routing protocol then it will work just like router.

I got  below topic on same from internet which is confusing me...

A L3 switch also does switching exactly like a L2 switch. The L3 means that it has an identity from the L3 layer. Practically this means that a L3 switch is capable of having IP addresses and doing routing. For intra-VLAN communication, it uses the MAC address table. For extra-VLAN communication, it uses the IP routing table.

What is the difference between L3 and router?

--Ambrish

[Jon Marshall · Accepted solution]

Can we do routing from Layer 3 switch to Wan routers??

Yes, you can use static routes or run a routing protocol.

A L3 switch is also a L2 switch ie. it can switch traffic based purely on the mac address and it does this when it sending traffic from one client to another within the same vlan.

But it can also do L3 switching ie. it can forward traffic based on the IP address to a destination network.

A L3 switch does all this in hardware as opposed to a lot of routers (but not all) that do it in software.

But absolutely you can route between a L3 switch and any other L3 device such as a router.

Jon

[Ambrish Kumar Pandey]

What is the basic and common difference between L3 switch and Router ?

[Jon Marshall]

I just told you :-)

What else are you looking for ?

Jon

[Joseph W. Doherty]

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Posting

A L3 switch usually has a full suite of L2 switch features, and often might have less L3 features than a router, such as QoS, NAT, etc.

A L3 switch usually has a much higher traffic forwarding capacity, for the same price.

Vendors can "muddy the waters".  For example, a 6500 is a L3 switch but a 7600 is a router, yet they overlap on the supervisors and line cards they support (and years ago, they actually ran the same IOS images).

[mlovellette]

Yes, you can do routing from a layer 3 switch to WAN routers.  From a L3 perspective there is no difference between a L3 switch and router.