GarrettCom Quad - Manual (Page 37)

Magnum Quad-Series Fiber Switches Installation and User Guide (06/09)
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4.0 OPERATION
This chapter describes the functions and operation of the Quad-Series.
4.1 Switching Functionality
A Magnum Quad-Series provides switched connectivity at Ethernet wire-speed
among all of its ports. The Magnum Quad-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
Quad-Series, but local traffic on a port will not consume any of the bandwidth on any
other port.
Magnum Quad-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 UP-LINK on RJ-45 quad-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 Quad-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 16-port Magnum Quad-Series units have address table capacity of 24K
node addresses (12K for 8-port models), 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 Quad-Port Switch automatically keeps up with node locations.