9-2 CHAPTER 9: ADMINISTERING APPLETALK ROUTING
Administering
Interfaces
You define interfaces to establish the relationship between the ports on
your EFSMs and the subnets in your network. You must define one interface
for each group of ports that are connected to the same subnet. This means
that every EFSM has one interface defined for each network to which it is
directly connected.
The maximum number of interfaces you can configure per router is 18.
An AppleTalk interface has the following information associated with it:
■Seed Interface
You can configure the interface to be a seed interface or nonseed interface.
Seed interfaces initialize the network with the configuration information the
administrator enters (network range, address, zone name, and ports).
Nonseed interfaces wait and listen for a seed interface and then take this
configuration initialization information from the first seed interface they
hear. After the nonseed interface obtains a network configuration, it begins
to participate in the routing of the network.
■Network Range
A range of numbers used to designate a network segment’s identity. This
allows the physical segment between two LANplex systems to be a range of
multiple networks.
■Address
The AARP address based on the network range and the network node
(1-253).
■Zone
The default zone name, as well as up to 15 additional defined zones.
■Ports
A single interface may contain several bridge ports. All of the ports
corresponding to one interface share the same AppleTalk address, cost, and
format. An EFSM contains a maximum of eighteen ports: two FDDI and
sixteen Ethernet. The port indices for the maximum configuration are the
following: 1,2 = FDDI; 3 – 18 = Ethernet.
You do not have to include every EFSM port in an interface (that is, some
ports may remain unassigned). Packets will be bridged to and from