Network traffic isolation behavior of network switches

First-timer on Stack Overflow here. I'm surprised nobody seems to have as开发者_StackOverflow中文版ked this question, and I hope this is the right place to ask this. I'm trying to determine if I should expect regular network switches (just simple switches, not routers) to have the capability to isolate local network traffic (i.e. targeted traffic that is directed to another local port in the ame switch) within the switch?

For example, if I have 2 machines connected to ports on the same switch (say, ports 2 and 3) and conversing using a directed, non-broadcast protocol (e.g. TCP), I wanted to make sure the traffic between these 2 machines are not forwarded the the rest of the network outside of the switched subnet.

I'm building a home network and I wanted to build private network "subnets" or "zones" using switches where local subnet traffic does not get forwarded to the "backbone" or the rest of the network. Note that I am NOT trying to block any inbound or outbound traffic to/from/between these "zones", but I just wanted to implement a "need to know" basis for these zones to limit network-wide exposure for localized traffic destined within the same switch. Specifically, I wanted the backbone to have as little unnecessary traffic as possible.

So back to the original question: is it fair to expect any network switch out there to be smart enough not to forward local traffic to the rest of the network? I would expect this to be the case, but I wanted to make sure.

PS: You can assume I have a DHCP/WINS server somewhere on the network that will be assigning IP addresses and the such.

I hope the question makes sense, and any help will be appreciated! - K.

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Short answer: yes, the switch is smart enough (otherwise it would be a hub).

And if you need fancy stuff you might have a look a VLANs.

And I believe this question belongs to serverfault or maybe superuser. That's probably why nobody asked it here :)