Cheetah Gigabit Adapter
Using VLANs
The Cheetah Gigabit Adapter supports the IEEE 802.1Q VLAN standard and can be configured to participate in a network with other devices that use VLANs.
An IEEE 802.1Q VLAN is a group of ports that can be located anywhere in the network, but communicate as though they belong to the same physical segment. VLANs help to simplify network management by allowing you to move devices to a new VLAN without having to change any connections. VLANs can be easily organized to reflect departmental groups (such as Marketing or R&D) or usage groups (such as
VLANs provide greater network efficiency by reducing broadcast traffic, but also allow you to make network changes without having to update IP addresses or IP subnets. VLANs inherently provide a high level of network security, since traffic must pass through a router or a Layer 3 switch to reach a different VLAN.
Usually VLANs are configured within IEEE 802.1Q VLAN- enabled switches in the network where ports are assigned to specific VLAN IDs. The Cheetah Gigabit Adapter allows up to 16 VLAN IDs to be configured directly within the card, so a network server can share its resources with up to 16 VLANs through just one switch link. This avoids the expense of having multiple adapters in a server, and significantly reduces the latency between clients and the server.
Note: The VLAN IDs configured within the adapter card must match those in the IEEE
Traffic Priority
The Cheetah Gigabit Adapter supports the IEEE 802.1p Quality of Service standard. Each VLAN is assigned a priority level in the VLAN ID table. Defining priority levels in the adapter card allows it to work with other network devices to deliver higher priority packets first.
Note that the IEEE 802.1p standard must be supported by the other devices in the network. Refer to the documentation of your network devices for configuration options on handling frames with priority tags.
VLANTable Maintenance
The Cheetah Gigabit Adapter’s VLAN configuration features a
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