2
px12 Advanced Network Configuration Guide
NIC bonding
: a computer networking technology that uses multiple network ports/cables in parallel
to increase the link speed beyond the limits of any one single port/cable and to increase the
redundancy for higher availability. Other similar terms include NIC teaming, link aggregation,
Ethernet trunking, etc.
VLAN
: Virtual LAN. A Virtual LAN (VLAN) is a group of hosts with a common set of requirements
that communicate as if they were attached to the same broadcast domain, regardless of their
physical location. A VLAN has the same attributes as a physical LAN, but does not require the hosts
to be located on the same network switch.
MTU
: Maximum Transmission Unit, sometimes also referred to as payload. This is the size of the
largest protocol data unit that a computer networking layer can transmit.
Jumbo Frame
: an Ethernet frame that carries more than the standard 1518 bytes of MTU.
IEEE 802.3ad
: a NIC bonding protocol referred to by its IEEE workgroup name.
IEEE 802.1Q
: also known as VLAN Tagging, is a networking standard written by the IEEE 802.1
workgroup to allow multiple bridged networks to transparently share the same physical network link
without leakage of information between networks.
When you join your Lenovo network storage device to your existing Active Directory user
organization, your Lenovo network storage device can work in a high availability environment, which
means it can work with multiple AD servers should one server fail or go offline.
VLAN CONFIGURATION
VLAN is essentially a Layer 2 (data Link Layer) construct, while an IP subnet is a Layer 3 (Network
Layer) construct. In an environment employing VLAN, a many-to-many relationship can exist
between VLANs and IP subnets. It is possible to have multiple subnets on one VLAN or have one
subnet spread across multiple VLANs.
The protocol most commonly used today in VLAN configuration is IEEE 802.1Q. Other proprietary
protocols exist, such as Cisco’s Inter-Switch Link (ISL) and 3Com’s Virtual LAN Trunk (VLT). To use
VLAN on a network interface, the network switch port that the interface is physically connected to
must be tagged accordingly. This normally requires the service of a network administrator.
The px12 implements IEEE 802.1Q, or VLAN Tagging, to provide the best interoperability. Each of
the four physical interfaces can have up to four VLANs tagged in addition to its existing network
configuration. Therefore, each network interface can have a maximum of five IP addresses
associated with it. There are many benefits of using VLAN in a business environment. These
benefits include:
•
Increased performance: grouping users performing similar functions or within individual
workgroups into logical networks will help reduce network collision over the switched network
and also limit the broadcast traffic. Moreover, the latency added by routers will be reduced
since less traffic will need to be routed between the logical networks.
