Allied Telesis AT-S62 - Manual (Page 613)

AT-S62 User’s Guide
Section VIII: Web Browser Management 613
You might also want to disable a port that is not being used to
secure it from unauthorized connections.
Possible settings for this parameter are:
Enabled The port will receive and forward packets. This is the
default setting.
Disabled The port will not receive or forward packets.
Broadcast Filter
Most frames on an Ethernet network are usually unicast frames. A
unicast frame is a frame that is sent to a single destination. A node
sending a unicast frame intends the frame for a particular node on
the network. For example, when a node sends a file to a network
server for storage, the node sends the file in unicast Ethernet
frames containing the destination address of the server where the
file is to be stored.
Broadcast frames are different. Broadcast frames are directed to
all nodes on the network or all nodes within a particular virtual
LAN. Broadcast packets can perform a variety of functions. For
example, some network operating systems use broadcast frames
to announce the presence of devices on a network.
The problem with broadcast frames is that too many of them
traversing a network can impact network performance. The more
bandwidth consumed by broadcast frames, the less available for
unicast frames.
Should the performance of your network be impacted by heavy
broadcast traffic, you can use this parameter to limit the number
of broadcast frames forwarded by the switch and so limit the
number of broadcast frames on your network.
When you activate this feature on a port, the port will discard all
egress broadcast packets. That is, if the port has a broadcast
packet that is intended to be sent to the end node connected to
the port, the port will instead discard the packet.
It should be noted that the filtering takes place only on egress
broadcast packets—packets that a port is transmitting. This filter
does not apply to ingress broadcast packets.
Possible settings for this parameter are:
Enabled The port will not transmit any broadcast frames.
Disabled The port will transmit broadcast frames. This is the
default setting.