Multiprotocol; Amount Of Devices Supported - Alcatel speed touch home Advanced User's Manual

14 Advanced Networking Concepts
Filtering
Isolation
14.3.4

Multiprotocol

14.3.5

Amount of Devices Supported

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Taking the previous step in account, if the destination MAC
address is found on the same port as the frame arrived on, it is
Filtered, i.e. silently discarded. Indeed, it makes little sense to
forward the frame on this port as the destination is directly
connected.
The Alcatel Multiport Bridge in the Speed Touch Home provides
Isolation between remote ports. i.e. Frames (including
broadcasts) arriving via ADSL/ATM ports will never be
forwarded/flooded to another ADSL/ATM port.
Bridging actions are performed on Ethernet or MAC frames. The
contents of the MAC frame is not of importance to the Bridge.
Consequently it makes no difference whether your PCs or
workstations use TCP/IP , Appletalk, IPX/SPX or any other protocol
suite.
This implies that any protocol that you are currently using for your
applications can be transported to remote destinations and
vice versa.
Via the dynamic learning and ageing mechanism of the STHome
Bridge, the number of PCs that can be connected to either
the local or virtual ports is theoretically unlimited. Practically the
Bridge database can hold as many as 256 entries simultaneously.
Assume a sample configuration of four 4 remote ports and one
local port (Ethernet interface). If all systems are evenly distributed
over all ports, you could connect around 50 systems per port to
completely fill the database.
This is of course a theoretical example as the upstream bandwidth
is limited to 1 Mbit/s maximum. Should only one virtual port be in
use, the 256 entries can be divided over two ports (virtual port
and Ethernet port).
3EC 17096 AAAA TCZZA Ed. 01