Allied Telesis at-8700xl series switch manual Generic VLAN Registration Protocol GVRP

68 AT-8700XL Series Switch User Guide

Generic VLAN Registration Protocol (GVRP)

The GARP application GVRP allows switches in a network to dynamically share VLAN membership information, to reduce the need for statically configuring all VLAN membership changes on all switches in a network. See the Generic Attribute Registration Protocol (GARP) chapter in the AT-8700XL Series Switch Software Reference.

Quality of Service

Quality of Service (QoS) enables you to prioritise traffic and/or limit the bandwidth available to it. The concept of QoS is a departure from the original networking protocols, which treated all traffic on the Internet or within a LAN the same. Without QoS, every different traffic type is equally likely to be dropped if a link becomes oversubscribed. This approach is now inadequate in many networks, because traffic levels have increased and networks transport time-critical applications such as streams of video data. QoS also enables service providers to easily supply different customers with different amounts of bandwidth.

Configuring Quality of Service involves two separate stages:

1.Classifying traffic into flows, according to a wide range of criteria.

Classification is performed by the switch’s packet classifier and is not described in this chapter, but in the Classifier chapter in the AT-8700XL Series Switch Software Reference.

2.Acting on these traffic flows.

Approaches, methods and commands for this are described in the Quality of Service chapter in the AT-8700XL Series Switch Software Reference.

Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)

The Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) makes it possible to automatically disable redundant paths in a network to avoid loops, and enable them when a fault in the network means they are needed to keep traffic flowing. A sequence of LANs and switches may be connected together in an arbitrary physical topology resulting in more than one path between any two switches. If a loop exists, frames transmitted onto the extended LAN would circulate around the loop indefinitely, decreasing the performance of the extended LAN. On the other hand, multiple paths through the extended LAN provide the opportunity for redundancy and backup in the event of a bridge experiencing a fatal error condition.

Software Release 2.6.1 C613-02030-00 REV B