C
HAPTER
1
| Introduction
Description of Hardware
– 14 –
S
WITCH
A
RCHITECTURE
This switch employs a wire-speed, non-blocking switching fabric. This permits
simultaneous wire-speed transport of multiple packets at low latency on all
ports. This switch also features full-duplex capability on all ports, which
effectively doubles the bandwidth of each connection.
T
his switch uses store-and-forward switching to ensure maximum data integrity.
With store-and-forward switching, the entire packet must be received into a
buffer and checked for validity before being forwarded. This prevents errors
from being propagated throughout the network.
N
ETWORK
M
ANAGEMENT
O
PTIONS
This switch contains a comprehensive array of LEDs for “at-a-glance” monitoring
of network and port status. It also includes a management agent that allows you
to configure or monitor the switch using its embedded management software, or
via SNMP applications. To manage a switch, you can make a direct connection to
the RS-232 console port (out-of-band), or you can manage it through a network
connection (in-band) using Telnet, the on-board Web agent, or Windows-based
network management software.
For a detailed description of the switch’s software features, refer to the
Management Guide
.
D
ESCRIPTION
OF
H
ARDWARE
10/100BASE-T P
ORTS
This switch contains 24 RJ-45 ports that operate at 10 Mbps or 100 Mbps, half or
full duplex. Because all ports on both switches support automatic MDI/MDI-X
operation, you can use straight-through cables for all network connections to
PCs or servers, or to other switches or hubs. (See
“Twisted-Pair Cable and Pin
Assignments” on page 41
.)
Each of these ports support auto-negotiation, so the optimum transmission
mode (half or full duplex), and data rate (10 or 100 Mbps) can be selected
automatically. If a device connected to one of these ports does not support auto-
negotiation, the communication mode of that port can be configured manually.
