Multicast Filtering; Spanning Tree Protocol And Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol - 3Com 3C17300-US Implementation Manual

18 C 1: S
HAPTER WITCH

Multicast Filtering

Spanning Tree
Protocol and Rapid
Spanning Tree
Protocol
F O
EATURES VERVIEW
port reacts accordingly by tuning the link from its higher speed to the
lower supported speed to provide an error-free connection to the
network.
For more information about auto-negotiation and port capabilities, see
Chapter 2 "Optimizing
Multicast filtering allows the Switch to forward multicast traffic to only
the endstations that are part of a predefined multicast group, rather than
broadcasting the traffic to the whole network.
The multicast filtering system supported by your Switch uses IGMP
(Internet Group Management Protocol) snooping to detect the
endstations in each multicast group to which multicast traffic should be
forwarded.
For more information about multicast filtering, see
Multicast Filtering".
Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) and Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP)
are bridge-based systems that makes your network more resilient to
link failure and also provides protection from network loops — one of
the major causes of broadcast storms.
STP allows you to implement alternative paths for network traffic in the
event of path failure and uses a loop-detection process to:
Discover the efficiency of each path.
■
Enable the most efficient path.
■
Disable the less efficient paths.
■
Enable one of the less efficient paths if the most efficient path fails.
■
RSTP is an enhanced version of the STP feature and is enabled by default.
RSTP can restore a network connection quicker than the STP feature.
RSTP can detect if it is connected to a legacy device that only supports
IEEE 802.1D STP and will automatically downgrade to STP on that
particular port.
STP conforms to the IEEE 802.1D-1998 standard, and RSTP conforms to
the IEEE 802.1w standard.
Bandwidth".
Chapter 3 "Using