Datasheet

Page 8 of 10

Wire-Speed IPX Support

The Catalyst 6000 Family MSM module is also a full-featured IPX router. The MSM provides basic services such as Novell network

RIP and Service Advertising Protocols (SAPs), Novell Enhanced IGRP, and route distribution among all of these protocols. In

addition, the MSM supports the following features to scale Novell networks:

• Get Nearest Server (GNS) response ﬁltering and round-robin GNS support

• Novell RIP

• SAP, protocol, and NetBIOS name ﬁltering

• Equal-cost path loadsharing

• Variable RIP and SAP timers

• Novell NetBIOS type 20 propagation support for legacy applications that continue to be mission critical

• Novell-compliant IPX ping utility

IP Address Load Balancing on Fast and Gigabit EtherChannel

EtherChannel distributes frames across the links in a channel by reducing part of the binary pattern formed from the addresses in

the frame to a numerical value that selects one of the links in the channel.

On the Catalyst 6000 Family of switches, EtherChannel frame distribution can use either MAC addresses or IP addresses and

either source or destination or both source and destination addresses. The selected mode applies to all EtherChannel conﬁgured

ports on the switch.

Use the option that provides the greatest variety in your conﬁguration. For example, if the trafﬁc on a channel is only going to

a singleMAC address (a router, for example), using thedestination MAC address always chooses the same link in the channel;using

source addresses or IP addresses may result in better frame distribution.

The ability to conﬁgure EtherChannel frame distribution by IP address is only available on Rev-A Supervisor boards on the

Catalyst 6000 and 6500 switches. To determine the revision of your Supervisor, use the “show module” command. If the display

shows the “Sub-Type” to be “L2 Switching Engine II WS-F6020A,” then EtherChannel frame distribution by IP address is

conﬁgurable on your switch and the default is to use source and destination IP addresses.

Trace Route MIB

Trace Route is helpful in locating routing issues on a distant gateway. If the local routing tables are correct on locally administered

routers, distant routers under another administration may be the cause of incorrectly routed or dropped data packets. Trace Route

will give a general location of where the packet is getting lost. Once a packet is handed to the next gateway, it is that gateway’s

responsibility to see to it that the packet continues on correctly to the ﬁnal destination. The Catalyst 6000 Family of switches now

add support the SNMP management information base (MIB) for Trace Route.

Spanning Tree Protocol Enable or Disable per VLAN

The ability to enable or disable Spanning Tree per VLAN is the latest Cisco enhancement to the Spanning Tree protocol.

STP is a Layer 2 link management protocol that provides path redundancy while preventing undesirable loops in the network.

For an Ethernet network to function properly, only one active path must exist at Layer 2 between two stations. STP operation

is transparent to end stations, which do not detect whether they are connected to a single LAN segment or a switched LAN of

multiple segments.

The Catalyst 6000 and 6500 series switches use STP (IEEE 802.1D bridge protocol) on all Ethernet VLANs. When you create

fault-tolerant internetworks, you must have a loop-free path between all nodes in a network. In STP, an algorithm calculates the

best loop-free path throughout a Catalyst switched network. The switches send and receive spanning-tree packets at regular

intervals. The switches do not forward the packets, they use the packets to identify a loop-free path. The default conﬁguration has

STP enabled for all VLANs.

Multiple active paths between stations cause loops in the network. If a loop exists in the network, you might receive duplicate

messages. When loops occur, some switches see stations on both sides of the switch. This condition confuses the forwarding

algorithm and allows duplicate frames to be forwarded.