Hi Vinod,

I can understand what must be going through your mind due to some of the tech articles you may have come across.

In real world, both are two different products, both with definite purposes and goals.

To simply the matter let me put this way:

A Switch is used to connect devices with in a locations (given all the standards of Ethernet, STP etc apply) and a L-3 Switch is with an additional capacity to understand Routing Protocols also and in some cases may even connect WAN Links also read 6500 Series Switch

On the other hand, Routers were designed primarily to connect two different locations over a WAN link (T1, FR, ISDN etc), however these days they may additionally host some SWitching capacity also (read 3800 or 3700 Router ESW NM).

Hope this may be quite helpful to you, if yes please do rate.

Kind Regards,

Wilson samuel

You can refer to following url:

http://www.cisco.com/warp/customer/473/howto_L3_intervlanrouting.html

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps5528/products_configuration_guide_chapter09186a008081daac.html#wp1056566

- By default on Routers all intf are L3/Routed intf

- By default on L2/L3 Switches all ports are L2/Switched ports.

However on L3 switch, ports can be configured in following roles :

* Access Port - L2 port, sending/receiving untagged frames from connected device. dst_mac_addr based forwarding done from CAM table lookup.

* Trunk Port - sending/receiving tagged frames from connected device.

* Routed Port - Functions similar to Router's ethernet intf. all forwarding done based on routing entry based in RIB.

* Switched Virtual Intf (SVI) - An virtual/logical L3 intf that function same as L3 intf. Can be used for inter-vlan routing within the switch and can perform IP routing with external router...

thanks,

rahul.