What is the main advantage of using switches?

Switches are network devices on the second layer of OSI model. A few of these switches also operate at a higher level as well. Also called intelligent hubs, switches operate on hardware addresses to exchange data across the devices connected to them. First, it performs broadcast and then Unicast. It supports a full-length duplex data transfer communication.

When a switch is given a signal, it develops a frame from the parts that are from the signal. Through this process, it gains access and reads the address of the destination. Post this it sends the frame to the appropriate port. This is a very effective means of data transmission, in spite of broadcasting it on all ports. Switches can also avoid loops through the use of spanning tree protocol.