Protocol Groups - Dell PowerConnect 5524P User Manual

Protocol Groups

Protocol groups are based on protocol-based VLANs.
Protocol-based VLANs
Untagged frames received on a VLAN-aware switch can be classified by
methods others than source port, such as data-link-layer protocol
identification. This classification method is referred to as protocol-based
VLANs.
Protocol-based VLANs are useful for isolating Layer 2 traffic of various Layer
3 protocols. If, for example, a switch serves IP stations and IPX stations that
communicate with a single VLAN-unaware server, without using
protocol-based VLANs, all the Layer 2 Broadcast traffic would reach all the
stations. With protocol-based VLANs, the switch can forward incoming
traffic from the server to stations in a specific VLAN only.
Protocol-based VLANs are only available on General ports.
Classification rules are set on a per-port basis, and may be sensitive to the
frame's encapsulation. The default encapsulation assumed is Ethernet.
On each port, a user can define associations between groups of data-link layer
protocols and ports. For each group/port combination, the user may set the
VLAN to which frames incoming on that port will be classified if they belong
to any of the protocols in the group.
Several protocol-groups may be associated to a single port, and a protocol
group may be assigned to multiple ports, if so desired.
It is not guaranteed that the VLAN to which the frame is classified exists in
the system, or is active on that port.
Restrictions
The following frames (packet) types are supported: Ethernet, RFC 1042, and
LLC Other.
There may be dependencies between protocols and encapsulations, and
specifying one protocol may automatically add additional protocols to the
protocol-group, such as specifying IP implies ARP and vice-versa.
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Dell PowerConnect 55xx Systems User Guide