Netopia Router PN Series - Manual (Page 130)

6-6 Reference Guide
Soft seeding: When a router that uses soft seeding is turned on or
reset, it requests network number and zone name information from
any existing routers on the networks it will serve. If no other routers
reply, the router uses the network numbers and zone names
specified in its own configuration. If other routers reply, the router
uses the information they provide, regardless of whether or not
there are conflicts between the information received and its
configured information. Once the soft seeding router begins to
route, it can serve as a seed router, providing network number and
zone name information to other routers upon request. The default
state of the Netopia Router’s AppleTalk ports is soft seeding.
Non-seeding: When a router that uses non-seeding is turned on or
reset, it requests network number and zone name information from
any existing routers on the networks it will serve. For any network
where no other routers reply, the non-seeding router will not have
any active ports until the next reset.
You should set the Netopia Router’s seeding action to work best in
your particular network environment. These scenarios may guide
you in deciding how to set the router’s seeding:
■ If the Netopia Router is the only router on your network, you
must set it to either hard seeding or soft seeding. The default
is soft seeding.
■ If there is another active router on your network, and you want
that router to configure the Netopia Router’s EtherTalk or
LocalTalk parameters, you can set the Netopia Router to
non-seeding.
■ If there is another active router on your network, you could set
the Netopia Router to be soft seeding if you are unsure that the
second router would always be available to configure the
Netopia Router’s EtherTalk or LocalTalk parameters.
■ If you want the Netopia Router to configure the EtherTalk or
LocalTalk parameters of other routers on your network, you
must set it to hard seeding. In this case, the other routers must
be soft seeding or non-seeding, and the Netopia Router must
already be active when those other routers are rebooted.