What is the difference between the router and switch

[sandeepganduri]

What is the difference between the router and switch. And how the wired router differs from switch. What is the difference.

 

[sturm]

Google.

 

[Kewlx25]

switches work on layer2 and routers on layer3
(UDP/TCP)/IP are Layer3 which means they ride on top of Layer2. Layer2 can be anything from ethernet to infiniband to T1 ... etc..

but yeah, google

 

[fazers_on_stun]

My understanding, which is probably incorrect , is that a switch doesn't read the destination IP address in a packet header, whereas a router does, in order to "route" the packet to the correct device according to the DNS assignment.

 

[Kewlx25]

My understanding, which is probably incorrect , is that a switch doesn't read the destination IP address in a packet header, whereas a router does, in order to "route" the packet to the correct device according to the DNS assignment.

this is actually a good description.

To follow through on it:
A switch routes via the MAC address (Layer 2)
A router routes via the IP address (Layer3)

Your MAC address is not sent over the internet because not all layer 2 protocols have MAC addresses. But since all routers work on Layer 3, a MAC address is not needed, just an IP.