3com 8807 User Guide

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GARP&GVRP C
ONFIGURATION
Configuring GARP
GARP Overview
Generic attribute registration protocol (GARP) offers a mechanism that is used by 
the members in the same switching network to distribute, propagate and register 
such information as VLAN and multicast addresses.
GARP dose not exist in a switch as an entity. A GARP participant is called GARP 
application. The main GARP applications at present are GVRP (GARP VLAN 
registration protocol) and GMRP. For details, refer to section “Configuring GVRP” 
“Configuring GVRP” and section "Configuring Multicast". When a GARP 
participant is on a port of the switch, this port corresponds to a GARP participant.
The GARP mechanism enables the configuration information on one GARP 
member to be propagated rapidly across the whole switching network. A GARP 
member can be a terminal workstation or a bridge. The GARP member can notify 
other members to register or remove its attribute information by sending 
declarations or withdrawing declarations. It can also register or remove the 
attribute information of other GARP members according to the received 
declarations/withdrawn declarations.
GARP members exchange information by sending messages. There are mainly 
three types of GARP messages, Join, Leave, and LeaveAll. When a GARP 
participant wants to register its attribute information with other switches, it sends 
the Join message outward. When it wants to remove some attribute information 
from other switches, it sends the Leave message. The LeaveAll timer is started 
simultaneously when each GARP participant is enabled and the LeaveAll message 
is sent upon expiration. The Join and Leave messages cooperate to ensure the 
logout and the re-registration of a message. The message exchange enables all the 
to-be-registered attribute information to be propagated to all the switches across 
the same switching network.
The destination MAC addresses of the packets of the GARP participants are 
specific multicast MAC addresses. A GARP-supporting switch classifies the packets 
received from the GARP participants and processes them with corresponding 
GARP applications (GVRP or GMRP).
GARP and GMRP are described in details in the IEEE 802.1P standard (which has 
been added to the IEEE802.1D standard). 3Com series switches fully support the 
GARP compliant with the IEEE standards.
The following section describes the GARP configuration task: