SMC Networks 8606T, Management Manual

Page: 158 / 182

A
DVANCED
T
OPICS
4-6
Connecting VLAN Groups
The switch supports intra-VLAN communication using wire-speed
switching. However, if you have devices in separate VLANs that must
communicate, and it is not practical to include these devices in a
common VLAN, then the VLANs can be connected via a Layer 3
switch (such as the SMC6724L3) or a router.
Multicast Filtering
Multicasting sends data to a group of nodes instead of a single
destination. The simplest way to implement multicasting is to
broadcast data to all nodes on the network. However, such an
approach wastes a lot of bandwidth if the target group is small
compared to overall the broadcast domain.
Since applications such as video conferencing and data sharing are
more widely used today, efficient multicasting has become vital. A
common approach is to use a group registration protocol that lets