GarrettCom 4K16 Manuale Utente

Magnum 4K16 Switches    Installation and User Guide       

(12/05) 

 

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This chapter describes the functions and operation of the 4K-Series. 

A Magnum 4K-Series provides switched connectivity at Ethernet wire-speed 

among all of its ports.  They support 10/100Mbs for copper media and 10 or 100Mb 

separate traffic domain for fiber port to maximize bandwidth utilization and network 

performance.  All ports can communicate to all other ports in a Magnum 4K-Series, but 

local traffic on a port will not consume any of the bandwidth on any other port. 

Magnum 4K-Series units are plug-and-play devices.  There is no software or 

jumper settings (hardware) configuring to be done at installation or for maintenance. The 

internal functions are described below. 

Each time a packet arrives on one of the switched ports, the decision is taken to 

either filter or to forward the packet.  Packets whose source and destination addresses are 

on the same port segment will be filtered, constraining them to that one port and relieving 

the rest of the network from processing them.  A packet whose destination address is on 

another port segment will be forwarded to the appropriate port, and will not be sent to the 

other ports where it is not needed.  Traffic needed for maintaining the operation of the 

network (such as occasional multi-cast packets) is forwarded to all ports. 

 

The Magnum 4K-Series Switches operate in the store-and-forward switching 

mode, which eliminates bad packets and enables peak performance to be achieved when 

there is heavy traffic on the network. 

All 16-port Magnum 4K-Series units have address table capacity of 4K node 

addresses, suitable for use in large networks. They are self-learning, so that as nodes are 

added or removed or moved from one segment to another, the 4K16-Port Switch 

automatically keeps up with node locations.   

An address-aging algorithm causes least-used addresses to fall out in favor of 

new frequently-used addresses.  To reset the address buffer, cycle power down-and-up.