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VLAN Supported Features
VLAN Support
VLANs are collections of switching ports that comprise a single broadcast domain. Packets are
classified as belonging to a VLAN based on either the VLAN tag or based on a combination of the
ingress port and package contents. Packets sharing common attributes can be grouped in the same
VLAN.
Port Based Virtual LANs (VLANs)
Port-based VLANs classify incoming packets to VLANs based on their ingress port.
Link Aggregation
The PowerConnect 2708/2716/2724
/2748
switches support up to six aggregated links. Each of the
six aggregated links may be defined with up to four member ports to form a single Link Aggregated
Group (LAG).
The benefits of this facility are:
• Fault tolerance protection from physical link disruption
• Higher bandwidth connections
• Improved bandwidth granularity
• High bandwidth server connectivity
A LAG is composed of ports with the same speed set to full-duplex operation.
BootP and DHCP Clients
DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) enables additional setup parameters to be received
from a network server upon system startup. DHCP service is an on-going process. DHCP is an
extension to BootP.
The BootP client is operational if there is a corrupted or invalid software image. The BootP client
then continuously attempts to find a BootP server, by sending BootP requests to all ports on the
default VLAN, until a BootP server replies. The information replied is then used to provide the
switch system with a TFTP server IP address and a download file name. The switch can then
configure these values to the TFTP client and try to download a valid runtime image.
Class of Service (CoS) Features
The PowerConnect 2708/2716/2724
/2748
system enables users to define various services for traffic
classes of service. The underlying mechanism for supporting bandwidth management and control
is based on the use of multiple priority queues for classifying traffic. The switches support four
queues per port.