10 Product Overview ELS100-24TX

Flow Control

Flow control allows you to manage network traffic during congestion
periods and to prevent the los s of pac kets when port buff er thresh olds ar e
exceeded. Flow control also serves to deny access to additional traffic
that could add to a congestion condition. The ELS100-24TX switch
supports flow control per the IEEE 802.3x standard. See Appendix C,
“Flow Control,” for more information on this feature.

Virtual LANs (VLANs)

VLANs allow you to connect users to a specific LAN segment regardless
of their physical location. The ELS100-24TX switch supports tagged
VLANs per the IEEE 802.1Q draft standard. With frame tagging, a short
tag is appended to every frame that crosses the network backbone. The
tag identifies which VLAN the frame belongs to. S ee Appe nd ix D, “Vi rtua l
LANs,” for more information.

Class of Service

Class of Service support allows you to assign a higher priority to selected
traffic passing through the switch. The ELS100-24TX switch supports
Class of Service attributes per the IEEE 802.1p draft standard using a
priority queuing mechanism. This feature ensures that traffic during
congestion periods will not interfere with traffic assign ed a higher priority.
Traffic assigned a lower priority is subject to discard when memory is in
short supply. See Appendix E, “Class of Service,” for more information.
Application Examples
The exploding popularity of the Inter net and of co rporate i ntranet s, as w ell
as new, high-bandwidth de s k top a ppl i c ations, are driving the demand for
Fast Ethernet. The increase i n m ult im ed ia tr af fic and the need to support
legacy protocols alongside ne w , d ata intensive applications is dri v ing the
need for network segmentation and traffic prioritization.
The ELS100-24TX switch is ideal for meeting the needs of today’s high
performance networks. The switch’s low cost and high port count makes
it attractive and affordable for dedicated 10/100Mbps connections to the
desktop. In addition, extensive features, including redundant links, traffic
Class of Service and VLAN capability, provide the management needed
for the workgroup and local backbone.
The following sections illustrate the ELS100-24TX switch employed in
application examples:
•Client/Server Network
•Local Backbone