SMC Networks 6726AL2 Management Manual page 33

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ESCRIPTION OF OFTWARE EATURES
Store-and-Forward Switching – The switch copies each frame into its
memory before forwarding them to another port. This ensures that all
frames are a standard Ethernet size and have been verified for accuracy
with the cyclic redundancy check (CRC). This prevents bad frames from
entering the network and wasting bandwidth.
To avoid dropping frames on congested ports, the switch provides 8 MB
for frame buffering. This buffer can queue packets awaiting transmission
on congested networks.
Spanning Tree Algorithm – The switch supports these spanning tree
protocols:
Spanning Tree Protocol (STP, IEEE 802.1D) – This protocol provides
loop detection and recovery by allowing two or more redundant
connections to be created between a pair of LAN segments. When there
are multiple physical paths between segments, this protocol will choose a
single path and disable all others to ensure that only one route exists
between any two stations on the network. This prevents the creation of
network loops. However, if the chosen path should fail for any reason, an
alternate path will be activated to maintain the connection.
Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP, IEEE 802.1w) – This protocol
reduces the convergence time for network topology changes to 3 to 5
seconds, compared to 30 seconds or more for the older IEEE 802.1D STP
standard. It is intended as a complete replacement for STP, but can still
interoperate with switches running the older standard by automatically
reconfiguring ports to STP-compliant mode if they detect STP protocol
messages from attached devices.
Virtual LANs – The switch supports up to 255 VLANs. A Virtual LAN is
a collection of network nodes that share the same collision domain
regardless of their physical location or connection point in the network.
The switch supports tagged VLANs based on the IEEE 802.1Q standard.
Members of VLAN groups can be dynamically learned via GVRP, or ports
can be manually assigned to a specific set of VLANs. This allows the
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