Enterasys Networks C1H124-24 - Manual (Page 22)

Port Trunking
1-4 Introduction
1.3 PORT TRUNKING
Port Trunking is used for load balancing or load sharing. Port Trunking provides a mechanism to
group, or aggregate, multiple links of any technology together to scale the backbone bandwidth
beyond the limitations of a single link. All links are user-configurable so administrators can scale
the backbone bandwidth by adding Port Trunking. The benefits of Port Trunking include the
following:
• All purchased bandwidth is used.
• Distributed, resilient links increase reliability and performance.
• Multiple technologies are supported within a single trunk for maximum flexibility.
1.4 REMOTE MONITORING (RMON)
The devices support the 1, 2, 3, and 4 Ethernet RMON groups. The Statistics, Alarms, Events, and
History groups are enabled on all ports by default.
1.5 PORT REDIRECT FUNCTION
The port redirect function, also referred to as “Port Mirroring,” is a troubleshooting tool used to
map traffic from multiple source ports to a single destination port within the module. This feature
allows frames, including those with errors, to be copied and sent to an analyzer or RMON probe.
The analyzer or RMON probe will see the data as if it were directly connected to the LAN segment
of the source port.
1.6 FLOW CONTROL
Flow control is a method of managing the flow of frames between two devices. It ensures that a
transmitting device does not overwhelm a receiving device with data. This is accomplished by the
transmitting device pausing its transmission while the receiving device processes the frames
already received.
The devices support frame-based 802.3x flow control. Frame-based 802.3x flow control is
supported on all Ethernet ports operating in the full-duplex mode. Flow control can be enabled or
disabled on a port-by-port basis.
Back pressure flow control is not supported on ports operating in the half-duplex mode.