Allied Telesis AT-S41 - Manual (Page 137)

AT-S41 User’s Guide
137
Broadcast Storm Control Overview
Most frames on an Ethernet network are unicast frames. A unicast frame
is sent to a single destination. That is, the node sending a unicast frame
intends the frame for a particular node on the network. For example,
when a node needs to send a file to a network server for storage, the
node sends the file in unicast Ethernet frames containing the destination
address of the server where the file is to be stored.
Broadcast frames are different. When a node sends out a broadcast
frame, the frame is directed to all nodes on the network or all nodes
within a particular virtual LAN. Broadcast frames can perform a variety of
functions in an Ethernet network. For example, some network operating
systems use broadcast frames to announce the presence of devices on
the network.
The problem with broadcast frames is that too many of them traversing
the network can impact network performance. Should the performance
of your network has been diminished by heavy broadcast traffic, you can
use the AT-S41 management software to limit the number of broadcast
frames passing through the switch and so limit the number of broadcast
frames on your network.
In order to use this feature, you must enable Broadcast Storm Control
and set the threshold level.
Note
The AT-S41 default setting is no broadcast storm control on the
switch.