Dell Force10 C150 Manual page 57

Deploying the Dell Force10 MXL into a Cisco Nexus Network Environment
STP
Spanning-Tree Protocol (STP)—see Spanning Tree.
Switching
Switching, in an Ethernet context, is a specific technology but the term has largely been generalized to
mean layer-2 Ethernet bridging. Ethernet switching is in fact the employment of ASIC technologies to
implement Ethernet traffic forwarding and filtering in specialized circuits and memory structures
designed for high throughput, low latency, and low cost performance. Generally an Ethernet switch
will at least function as a layer-2 bridge but more advanced models have multilayer capabilities
including layer-3 routing and multilayer filtering, logic, and frame modification.
Switchport
Switchport is a configuration term used to denote an Ethernet switch's link interface that is configured
for layer-2 bridging (participating in one or more VLANs).
ToR
Top of Rack (ToR) is a term for a switch that is actually positioned at the top of a server rack in a data
center.
Trunk
Trunk is an ambiguous term in Ethernet networking that can apply to a LAG—a group of multiple links
acting as one or to a switchport interface of an Ethernet switch configured in trunk mode to pass
multiple VLANs across the one link.
VLAN
Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) is a single layer-2 network (also called a broadcast domain as
broadcast traffic does not escape a VLAN on its own). Multiple VLANs can be passed between switches
using switchport trunk interfaces. When passed across trunk links, frames in a VLAN are prefixed with
the number of the VLAN that they belong to—a twelve bit value that allows just over 4000 differently
numbered VLANs.
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