3com 2226 PLUS User Guide

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8
C
HAPTER
 1: I
NTRODUCING
 
THE
 B
ASELINE
 S
WITCH
SFP Ports
The two SFP ports support fiber Gigabit Ethernet 
short-wave (SX) and long-wave (LX) SFP transceivers 
in any combination. This offers you the flexibility of 
using SFP transceivers to provide connectivity 
between the Switch and a 1000 Mbps core network. 
When an SFP port is in operation, the corresponding 
10/100/1000BASE-T port is disabled.
Traffic Prioritization 
The Switch supports two types of traffic prioritization:
Prioritization of IP phone traffic
Priority Queuing
Prioritization of IP Phone Traffic
The Switch can recognize when an NBX phone is con-
nected to any of the ports 1 to 24. The Switch will 
automatically detect the NBX phone when the phone 
starts up, and will ensure that traffic to and from the 
phone is given the highest priority.
To ensure that the NBX phone is recognized by the 
Switch during its initialization, do not connect any 
data source through the phone until the phone has 
finished its startup sequence. 
Once the phone is available for use, any data source 
(for example, a computer) can then be connected to 
the phone’s pass-through port. This only applies if 
you use a single wall jack for your network connec-
tion and use the pass-through LAN port on the NBX 
phone.
Traffic Priority Queuing
The Switch also offers priority queuing. It examines 
each packet that it receives to determine if it is prior-
ity-encoded. If a packet is priority-encoded, the 
Switch reads the priority level and determines 
whether the packet should be directed through the 
normal or high priority channel. This feature is useful, 
for example, during periods of excessive network 
load, when one type of traffic may require priority 
over another. The Switch is configured to comply 
with 802.1p, VLAN tagged frames.
Traffic prioritization ensures that high priority data is 
forwarded through the Switch without being delayed 
by lower priority data. It differentiates traffic into 
classes and prioritizes those classes automatically.
Traffic prioritization uses multiple traffic queues that 
are present in the hardware of the Switch to ensure 
that high priority traffic is forwarded on a different 
queue from lower priority traffic, and is given prefer-
ence over that traffic. This ensures that time-sensitive 
traffic gets the highest level of service. 
The 802.1D standard specifies eight distinct levels of 
priority (0 to 7), each of which relates to a particular 
type of traffic. The priority levels and their traffic types 
are shown in 
Table 3   Priority Levels for Traffic Types
Priority Level
Traffic Type
0
Best effort
1
Background
2
Standard (spare)