Chapter 5 Configuring Workgroups Using Lcm; Overview - Cabletron Systems SmartSTACK ELS10-27TX Supplement Manual

CHAPTER 5
CONFIGURING WORKGROUPS USING LCM

5.1 OVERVIEW

Workgroups are a proprietary form that was developed prior to the IEEE standard
being available. Workgroups are only supported in the 802.1D mode. The
ELS10-27TX supports up to eight user defined Workgroups, with limited support
for overlapping Workgroups.
The goal of Workgroups was to isolate broadcast and multicast traffic to within
the Workgroup. In some cases unicast traffic will also be isolated. Due to the fact
that a typical unicast address is obtained by first issuing an ARP packet (which is
a broadcast, and the broadcast packet will not be forwarded outside of the
Workgroup), the unicast address will not be learned outside of the Workgroup.
The end result is that host or servers will not be able to communicate with other
hosts or servers outside of their Workgroup.
Unlike the IEEE standard VLANs which spans switches, Workgroups only deal
with filtering and forwarding of packets within the single switch. When packets
are received on a port, the packet will be identified with a single Workgroup. The
packet will then be forwarded or filtered based on that single Workgroup
marking. When a packet leaves the switch, the packet will appear just as it did
when it was received on the inbound port.
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