In 1989, Motorola Codex introduced their 6310 EtherSpan, and Kalpana introduced their EtherSwitch; these were examples of the first commercial Ethernet switches. Early switches such as this used cut-through switching where only the header of the incoming packet is examined before it is either dropped or forwarded to another segment. This reduces the forwarding latency. One drawback of this method is that it does not readily allow a mixture of different link speeds. Another is that packets that have been corrupted are still propagated through the network. The eventual remedy for this was a return to the original store and forward approach of bridging, where the packet is read into a buffer on the switch in its entirety, its frame check sequence verified and only then the packet is forwarded. In modern network equipment, this process is typically done using application-specific integrated circuits allowing packets to be forwarded at wire speed.
In 1989, Motorola Codex introduced their 6310 EtherSpan, and Kalpana introduced their EtherSwitch; these were examples of the first commercial Ethernet switches. Early switches such as this used cut-through switching where only the header of the incoming packet is examined before it is either dropped or forwarded to another segment. This reduces the forwarding latency. One drawback of this method is that it does not readily allow a mixture of different link speeds. Another is that packets that have been corrupted are still propagated through the network. The eventual remedy for this was a return to the original store and forward approach of bridging, where the packet is read into a buffer on the switch in its entirety, its frame check sequence verified and only then the packet is forwarded. In modern network equipment, this process is typically done using application-specific integrated circuits allowing packets to be forwarded at wire speed.