What is Store-And-Forwarding Switching?

Question

What is Store-And-Forwarding Switching?

Can I get an example and a few points on what exactly it is?

Thanks,

Chris

Answer 1

There are three kinds of switching: store-and-forward; cut-through; and fragment-free. The first kind takes in the whole frame before deciding where to send it next (in other words where to forward it). The other two are faster because they only take in the first part of frame before "switching" it, that is, before deciding where to forward it to. Store-and-forward is said to have more "latency" because of the delay that it introduces into the communications.

Answer 2

This is slower type of Layer 2 switching the other one is cut through. In this type of switching the entire packet is first read and then is forwarded. Which means that CRC is first read before the frame is forwarded to the next hop and hence slow, but this ensures more reliability.

Answer 3

On top of what has already been said, a store and forward switch can keep copies of recently switched packets and forward them on again if they are lost due to colision or some other problem.