SMC Networks GS8P-SMART, Management Manual

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Chapter 1: Introduction
The EZ Switch 10/100/1000 SMCGS8P-Smart is a managed Gigabit PoE switch
that delivers performance and control to your network. It provides 8 full-duplex
1000BASE-T ports that significantly improve network performance and boost
throughput using features configured through a web-based management interface.
With 16 Gigabits of throughput bandwidth, this switch provides an effective solution
to meeting the growing demands on your network.
Description of Software Features
The switch provides a wide range of advanced performance enhancing features.
Flow control eliminates the loss of packets due to bottlenecks caused by port
saturation. Broadcast storm suppression prevents broadcast traffic storms from
engulfing the network. CoS priority queueing ensures the minimum delay for moving
real-time multimedia data across the network. While multicast filtering provides
support for real-time network applications. Some of the management features are
briefly described below.
Configuration Backup and Restore – You can save the current configuration
settings to a file on the web management station, and later download this file to
restore the switch configuration settings.
Authentication – The switch supports port-based user authentication via the IEEE
802.1X protocol. This protocol uses the Extensible Authentication Protocol over
LANs (EAPOL) to request user credentials from the 802.1X client, and then verifies
the client’s right to access the network via an authentication server.
Port Configuration – You can manually configure the speed, duplex mode, and
flow control used on specific ports, or use auto-negotiation to detect the connection
settings used by the attached device. Use the full-duplex mode on ports whenever
possible to double the throughput of switch connections. Flow control is enabled to
control network traffic during periods of congestion and prevent the loss of packets
when port buffer thresholds are exceeded. The switch supports flow control based
on the IEEE 802.3x standard.
Port Mirroring – The switch can unobtrusively mirror traffic from any port to a
monitor port. You can then attach a protocol analyzer or RMON probe to this port to
perform traffic analysis and verify connection integrity.
Port Trunking – Ports can be combined into an aggregate connection. Trunks can
be manually set up or dynamically configured using IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation
Control Protocol (LACP). The additional ports dramatically increase the throughput
across any connection, and provide redundancy by taking over the load if a port in
the trunk should fail. The switch supports up to 4 trunks.
Broadcast Storm Control – Broadcast suppression prevents broadcast traffic from
overwhelming the network. When enabled on a port, the level of broadcast traffic