Black Box 5000 manual Classes, Local and Remote Hub Groups

Multiserver 5000

10.8 Classes

WHAT IS A SWITCHING CLASS?

A class is a group of one or more ports that may be used for similar purposes by network users (e.g., all ports connected to a specific application may be contained in a class). You can think of classes as hunt groups, where the user will be connected to any of the available ports in the group. The maximum number of classes per Multiserver is 64. Users can access port(s) by name, without having to know the port’s physical location in the network.

Classes provide the following features:

•Secondary class is used if all ports in the primary class are busy.

•Destination-port access can be password- protected.

•Configurable class messages.

•Disconnection on inactivity timer (no data activity timeout).

•Port contention handling through first-come, first-serve queues. Refer to Section 10.10, Port Contention/Queueing.

A port may be configured in only one class. A class does not need to be exclusive to any node— multiple nodes may offer the same class. In fact, this is desirable if multiple ports in multiple nodes are connected to the same application.

When a class is defined on more than one node, the Multiserver will search the local hub group (see Figure 10-3) for the primary class and then for the secondary class. If there are no available ports on the local hub group, the Multiserver will place the call in queue for any busy primary ports and place a call request to the remote Multiserver hub group(s). A CALL IN PROGRESS message will be sent to the user.

The remote Multiserver(s) will search through its hub group for an available primary class, and then for the secondary class. If no ports are available on the remote hub group(s), the remote Multiserver will place the call in queue for any busy primary port. If the class exists on more than one remote hub group, there is no way to determine which remote unit will be connected.

The first available port will cause the release of any other pending queue requests. Refer to Section 10.5, Asynchronous Connections, for more details about class connections.

LOCAL HUB GROUP

LOCAL

FEEDER MUX

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MULTISERVER

5000

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REMOTE HUB GROUP

REMOTE

FEEDER MUX

REMOTE

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MULTISERVER

5000

REMOTE

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Figure 10-3. Local and Remote Hub Groups.

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