GarrettCom 4K-Series - Manual (Page 29)

Magnum 4K8 Switches Installation and User Guide (10/04)
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4.0 OPERATION
This chapter describes the functions and operation of the 4K8 Switch.
4.1 Switching Functionality
A Magnum 4K-Series provides switched connectivity at Ethernet wire-speed
among all of its ports. The Magnum 4K-Series supports10/100Mbs for copper media and
10 or 100Mb separate traffic domain for fiber port to maximize bandwidth utilization and
network performance. All ports can communicate to all other ports in a Magnum 4K8,
but local traffic on a port will not consume any of the bandwidth on any other port.
Magnum 4K-Series units are plug-and-play devices. There is no software
configuring to be done at installation or for maintenance. The only hardware
configuration settings are user options for bonus port (port# 9) on RJ-45 and fiber port.
Half / Full duplex mode and 10 or 100Mbps selection for the switched ports can be done
through jumper settings inside the unit. The internal functions of both are described
below.
Filtering and Forwarding
Each time a packet arrives on one of the switched ports, the decision is taken to
either filter or to forward the packet. Packets whose source and destination addresses are
on the same port segment will be filtered, constraining them to that one port and relieving
the rest of the network from processing them. A packet whose destination address is on
another port segment will be forwarded to the appropriate port, and will not be sent to the
other ports where it is not needed. Traffic needed for maintaining the operation of the
network (such as occasional multi-cast packets) is forwarded to all ports.
The Magnum 4K-Series Switches operate in the store-and-forward switching
mode, which eliminates bad packets and enables peak performance to be achieved when
there is heavy traffic on the network.
Address Learning
All 8-port Magnum 4K-Series units have address table capacity of 16K node
addresses suitable for use in large networks. They are self-learning, so that as nodes are
added or removed or moved from one segment to another, the 4K8-Port Switch
automatically keeps up with node locations.
An address-aging algorithm causes least-used addresses to fall out in favor of