Function
In general, edge devices are normally routers that provide authenticated access (most commonly PPPoA and PPPoE) to faster, more efficient backbone and core networks. The trend is to make the edge device smart and the core device(s) "dumb and fast", so edge routers often include Quality of Service (QoS) and multi-service functions to manage different types of traffic. Consequently, core networks are often designed with switches that use routing protocols such as Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) or Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) for reliability and scalability, allowing edge routers to have redundant links to the core network. Links between core networks are different, for example Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routers often used for peering exchanges.
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Famous quotes containing the word function:
“The mother’s and father’s attitudes toward the child correspond to the child’s own needs.... Mother has the function of making him secure in life, father has the function of teaching him, guiding him to cope with those problems with which the particular society the child has been born into confronts him.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
“Every boy was supposed to come into the world equipped with a father whose prime function was to be our father and show us how to be men. He can escape us, but we can never escape him. Present or absent, dead or alive, real or imagined, our father is the main man in our masculinity.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)