Chapter 1: Introduction
Overview
The MR2228-S2C switch is a stackable Fast Ethernet switch with 24 10BASE-T/100BASE-TX ports and two 1000BASE-T ports that operate in combination with two Small Form Factor Pluggable (SFP) transceiver slots. The switch also provides two 1 Gbps built-in stacking ports for connecting up to eight units in one stack. The stacking ports can also be used as normal Ethernet ports in standalone mode. The MR2228-S2C also includes an SNMP-based management agent, which provides both in-band and out-of-band access for managing the switch.
The MR2228-S2C provides a broad range of powerful features for Layer 2 switching, delivering reliability and consistent performance for your network traffic. It brings order to poorly performing networks by segregating them into separate broadcast domains with IEEE 802.3Q compliant VLANs, and empowers multimedia applications with multicast switching and CoS services.
Figure 1-1. Front and Rear Panels
Switch Architecture
The MR2228-S2C employs a wire-speed, non-blocking switching fabric. This permits simultaneous wire-speed transport of multiple packets at low latency on all ports. The switch also features full-duplex capability on all ports, which effectively doubles the bandwidth of each connection.
The switch uses store-and-forward switching to ensure maximum data integrity. With store-and-forward switching, the entire packet must be received into a buffer and checked for validity before being forwarded. This prevents errors from being propagated throughout the network.
The switch includes built-in stacking ports that enable up to eight units that can be connected together through a 1 Gbps stack backplane. The switch stack can be managed from a master unit using a single IP address.