14CHAPTER 1: SWITCH FEATURES OVERVIEW
Automatic IP By default the Switch tries to configure itself with IP information without Configuration requesting user intervention. It uses the following industry standard
methods to allocate the Switch IP information:
■Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
■
■Bootstrap Protocol (BOOTP)
For ease of use, you do not have to choose between these three automatic configuration methods. The Switch tries each method in a specified order.
For more information about how the automatic IP configuration feature works, see Chapter 9 “Using Automatic IP Configuration”.
Port Security Port security guards against unauthorized users connecting devices to your network. The port security feature, Disconnect Unauthorised Device (DUD), disables a port if an unauthorised device transmits data on it.
Aggregated Links Aggregated links are connections that allow devices to communicate using up to two links in parallel. On the Switch 4200, aggregated links are only supported on the 10/100/1000 Mbps ports. Aggregated links provide two benefits:
■They can potentially double the bandwidth of a connection.
■They can provide redundancy — if one link is broken, the other link can share the traffic for that link.
For more information about aggregated links, see Chapter 2 “Optimizing Bandwidth”.