Cabletron Systems, Inc.
PO Box 5005
Rochester, NH 03866-5005
This addendum is to be used in conjunction with the Installation and User Guide that ships
with the Cabletron SmartSTACK 100 ELS100-24TXG and/or ELS100-24TXM Ethernet
Switches.
This document contains proprietary information that is the property of Cabletron Systems,
Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, translated,
transcribed, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, manual, electric, electronic, electromagnetic, mechanical, chemical, optical, or otherwise, without prior explicit written permission of Cabletron Systems, Inc. Furthermore, Cabletron Systems, Inc. reserves the right to
revise this publication and to make changes in content from time to time without obligation to
provide notification of such revision or changes.
Figure A-1 shows the user interface hierarchy for the Cabletron
SmartSTACK ELS100-24, firmware revision 2.01.
System
Configuration
Menu
Switch
Configuration
Menu
Port Menu
SNMP Configuration Menu
System Name
System Location
System Contact
IP Address
Subnet Mask
Default Gateway
BootP/DHCP Enable
Screen Timeout (minutes)
READ/WRITE Password
READ ONLY Password
Terminal Baud Rate
Power Up Diagnostics
Syslog Server IP Address
Lowest Syslog Severity Level
Web Management Enable
Forwarding Table Configuration Menu
Spanning Tree Configuration Menu
VLAN Configuration Menu
Forwarding Table Aging Time (seconds)
Broadcast Cutoff Rate
Port Mirroring Enable
Mirrored Port Transmit Data Mirror Enable
Mirroring Port Receive Data Mirror Enable
Class of Service Configuration Menu
Trunking Configuration Menu
ID
Port Name
Enable Status
Link Status
Auto Negotiated Status
Full Duplex Status
Speed (10/100Mbps)
Type
Flow Control Status
Configure
SNMP Private Community Name
SNMP Public Community Name
Trap Destination #1-4
Community Name #1-4
Display Table
Make Entry Static
Add Static Entry
Delete Static Entry
Modify Static Entry
Search by Port#
Search by MAC Address
Spanning Tree Protocol Enable
Port Configuration Menu
Hello Time (seconds)
Forward Delay (seconds)
Max Age (seconds)
Bridge Priority
SmartTrunking Configuration Menu
VLAN Enable
VLAN Menu
VLAN Port Menu
Class of Service Enable
Priority Threshold
Configure Port Priority
ID
Name
Ports in Trunk
Configure
Port ID
Port Name
Path Cost
Port Priority
Port State
Select Port
ID
VLAN Name
Ports in VLAN
VLAN Egress Ports
Configure
Port ID
Port Name
Type
Modify Port Type
Port ID
Port Name
Priority Default
Configure
Switch
Statistics
Screen
General
Information
Screen
Download Software Menu
Save Current Configuration
Return to Default Configuration
Logout
Reset
ID
Transmitted
Received
Forwarded
Filtered
Dropped
Errored
Switch Summary
Port Statistics
Trunking Statistics
Software Version
Serial Number
Base MAC Address
Up Time (minutes)
Power Up Count
SmartTrunking is a link aggregation feature that allows multiple physical
ports of the switch to be aggregated together to form a single logical
connection between network devices. All physical connections in the
logical connection carry traffic, as compared with previous software
versions in which Spanning Tree would block all traffic on all but one of
the physical connections.
Background
A trunk is a group of ports that perform as a single logical port, connecting
the ELS100-24 switch with another network device. Compared with a
single port, the group of ports in a trunk feature increased bandwidth and
provide a level of connection resiliency - when one physical port link in the
trunk group goes down, the overall connection is not lost. When a port in
a trunk group is removed (link goes down or a cable is severed), traffic on
that port will be redistributed to other ports in the trunk group.
In the example in Figure A-2 below, three switches are connected
(stacked) through a series of trunk groups. Two physical ports are
combined to form each trunk group. The fiber ports in the top switch form
Trunk 1 which carries traffic to the network backbone.
Figure A-2. Trunking Application Example
SmartTrunking uses the DEC Hunt Group protocols - PLAP and LLAP to automatically establish and maintain a trunk connection. Use of these
protocols can be enabled or disabled as desired. When the protocols are
enabled, the switch is SmartTrunk-compliant and will automatically
configure to work with Cabletron products such as a Smart Switch Router
(SSR), SmartSwitch, SmartSTACK, etc. When the protocols are disabled,
the switch can be manually configured to interoperate with trunking
implementations used by other vendors.
SmartTrunking support in firmware revision 2.01 follows these
configuration rules:
There can be up to 2 trunk groups configured per switch cluster
•
(group of 8 ports).
Individual trunk groups can be defined only in one cluster, not across
•
clusters.
There can be from 2-8 ports defined per trunk group.
•
There can be up to 6 trunk groups defined per switch.
•
Ports in a trunk group can operate in any combination of speed and
•
duplex mode (10 half with 100 full, for example).
Ports in a trunk group must be in the same VLAN and have the same
•
VLAN mode (hybrid/access).
The Gigabit Ethernet ports on the ELS100-24TXG cannot be
•
trunked.
Further information on SmartTrunking can be found in the
Systems SmartTrunk User’s Guide
Cabletron Systems user manual website at:
http://www.cabletron.com/support/manuals
The implementation of SmartTrunking in firmware version 2.01 on the
ELS100-24 product line differs in several ways from the information
contained in the SmartTrunk User's Guide. The primary differences in the
ELS100-24 implementation are as follows:
Full load balancing of traffic across ports in a trunk is not supported.
•
Unicast traffic is sent to the same port that the destination MAC
address of the packet was learned.
Although it is highly recommended, Spanning Tree does not have to
•
be enabled to use SmartTrunking.
The ports in a trunk are not required to operate in full duplex mode,
•
but can be operated in any combination of half duplex or full duplex.
If a port in a trunk goes down, traffic on that port is redirected onto
•
other links in the trunk whether protocols are enabled or disabled.
If protocols are disabled, inadvertently configuring a user-attached
•
port to a SmartTrunking trunk group will not result in the user losing
network connectivity.
. To examine this guide, see the
Cabletron
The concept of logical ports, each comprised of the physical ports in
•
a trunk group, is not implemented. In both the User Interface and
SNMP, both physical port and trunk numbers can be accessed.
However, port-related configuration features, such as port mirroring,
VLANs, Class of Service, and Spanning Tree, are performed only on
a physical port basis, not a logical port (trunk) basis.