Spanning Tree Protocol; Simple Network Management Protocol; Port Mirroring; Port Trunking And Load Balancing - HP ProLiant BL p-Class GbE2 User Manual

Spanning Tree Protocol

The GbE2 Interconnect Switch supports IEEE 802.1D Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), which
allows the blocking of links that form loops between switches in a network. When multiple
links between switches are detected, a primary link is established. Duplicated links are
blocked from use and become standby links. If the primary link fails, the standby link is
activated.
In addition, the GbE2 Interconnect Switch provides a spanning tree domain per VLAN. The
switch is compatible with Cisco® PVST+ and Cisco PVST, when the other device is
configured as untagged or configured to use 802.1q tagging. Sixteen spanning tree domains
are supported per GbE2 Interconnect Switch.

Simple Network Management Protocol

Each GbE2 Interconnect Switch can be configured and monitored remotely from a Simple
Network Management Protocol (SNMP)-based network management station. The GbE2
Interconnect Switch supports industry-standard SNMP Management Information Bases
(MIBs) and proprietary HP enterprise switch MIBs for fault detection and monitoring of
switch functionality. In addition, the GbE2 Interconnect Switch supports various
environmental traps such as temperature and fan failure traps.
To secure the management interface, the switch administrator can configure community
strings with two levels of access: Read and Read/Write. Access to the GbE2 Interconnect
Switch can also be restricted to only management stations that are members of a specific
Internet Protocol (IP) network. This can be achieved by configuring the address/mask of that
specific network as a restricted management network address/mask.

Port Mirroring

The GbE2 Interconnect Switch allows you to mirror one or multiple ports (source ports) to
another port (destination port) for network monitoring and troubleshooting purposes. This
technology offers a way for network packet analyzers to view the traffic moving through the
GbE2 Interconnect Switches by providing a copy of the traffic that is currently being passed
through any other port. The packets are normally sent to a network packet analyzer or other
monitoring device attached to the mirror port.

Port Trunking and Load Balancing

The GbE2 Interconnect Switch supports EtherChannel compatible IEEE 802.3ad (without
LACP) port trunking allowing several ports to be grouped together and act as a single logical
link called a trunk. This feature provides a bandwidth that is a multiple of the bandwidth of a
single link. It also improves reliability since load balancing is automatically applied to the
ports in the trunked group. A link failure within the group causes the network traffic to be
directed to the remaining links in the group.
HP ProLiant BL p-Class GbE2 Interconnect Switch User Guide
HP CONFIDENTIAL Codename: Strawberry Part Number: 331399-001 Last Saved On: 7/17/03 2:21 PM
Introduction
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