Administrator Guide

Concept Explanation
port transitions through this state during ring bring-up. All ports transition through
this state when a port comes up.
• Pre-Forwarding State — A transition state before moving to the Forward state.
Control traffic is forwarded but data traffic is blocked. The Master node Secondary
port transitions through this state during ring bring-up. All ports transition through
this state when a port comes up.
• Disabled State — When the port is disabled or down, or is not on the VLAN.
Ring Protocol
Timers
• Hello Interval — The interval when ring frames are generated from the Master
node’s Primary interface (default 500 ms). The Hello interval is configurable in 50
ms increments from 50 ms to 2000 ms.
• Dead Interval — The interval when data traffic is blocked on a port. The default is
three times the Hello interval rate. The dead interval is configurable in 50 ms
increments from 50 ms to 6000 ms.
Ring Status The state of the FRRP ring. During initialization/configuration, the default ring status is
Ring-down (disabled). The Primary and Secondary interfaces, control VLAN, and Master
and Transit node information must be configured for the ring to be up.
• Ring-Up — Ring is up and operational.
• Ring-Down — Ring is broken or not set up.
Ring Health-Check
Frame (RHF)
The Master node generates two types of RHFs. RHFs never loop the ring because they
terminate at the Master node’s secondary port.
• Hello RHF (HRHF) — These frames are processed only on the Master node’s
Secondary port. The Transit nodes pass the HRHF through without processing it.
An HRHF is sent at every Hello interval.
• Topology Change RHF (TCRHF) — These frames contains ring status, keepalive,
and the control and member VLAN hash. The TCRHF is processed at each node of
the ring. TCRHFs are sent out the Master Node’s Primary and Secondary interface
when the ring is declared in a Failed state with the same sequence number, on
any topology change to ensure that all Transit nodes receive it. There is no
periodic transmission of TCRHFs. The TCRHFs are sent on triggered events of ring
failure or ring restoration only.
Implementing FRRP
• FRRP is media and speed independent.
• FRRP is a Dell proprietary protocol that does not interoperate with any other vendor.
• You must disable the spanning tree protocol (STP) on both the Primary and Secondary interfaces before
you can enable FRRP.
• All ring ports must be Layer 2 ports. This is required for both Master and Transit nodes.
• A VLAN configured as a control VLAN for a ring cannot be configured as a control or member VLAN for
any other ring.
• The control VLAN is not used to carry any data traffic; it carries only RHFs.
Force10 Resilient Ring Protocol (FRRP) 364