Data & Optical Solutions
Application Switching
Although we cannot imagine modern networks without the approved Layer 2 and Layer 3 Switches, heavily increasing traffic calls for more intelligent switching architectures. We are in particular thinking of Application Switching.
This name, however, does by no means cover all its applications. In principle, it means switching within the range of Layers
Whereas in the case of Load Balancing, traffic distribution has priority (which makes possible, among others, higher content-availability and shorter response times and in the Security sector, i.e. Firewall/VPN/IDS Load Balancing, "division of labor" is the crucial factor), Content Switching is also offered as a tool for Service Differentiation.
In this context, we think of applications, which e.g. use high-end servers for Multimedia-applications, whereas more static contents are stored on less performant systems. A different field of application (where money can be earned as well) is a Content-Switching environment that switches to different servers, depending on the user. Finally, also aspects of encryption fall into the field of Application Switching, where it is left to the Content Switch to decide between encrypted and unencrypted traffic.
More detailed information on encryption can also be found under
