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:
“As a medium of exchange,... worrying regulates intimacy, and it is often an appropriate response to ordinary demands that begin to feel excessive. But from a modernized Freudian view, worrying—as a reflex response to demand—never puts the self or the objects of its interest into question, and that is precisely its function in psychic life. It domesticates self-doubt.”
—Adam Phillips, British child psychoanalyst. “Worrying and Its Discontents,” in On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored, p. 58, Harvard University Press (1993)
“Uses are always much broader than functions, and usually far less contentious. The word function carries overtones of purpose and propriety, of concern with why something was developed rather than with how it has actually been found useful. The function of automobiles is to transport people and objects, but they are used for a variety of other purposes—as homes, offices, bedrooms, henhouses, jetties, breakwaters, even offensive weapons.”
—Frank Smith (b. 1928)
“The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)