Command Line Interface Guide

Data Center Bridging Commands 843
explicitly by the operator. These ports will advertise their configuration to
their peer if DCBX is enabled on that port. Incompatible peer configurations
will be logged and counted with an error counter.
The default operating mode for each port is Manual for PowerConnect
releases; however, customer platforms may change the default mode for
selected ports to either Auto-Upstream or Auto-Downstream mode. An
example of this would be a blade switch that needed to support touchless
configuration and has certain ports that are upstream ports and other ports
that are downstream ports. A port that is set to manual mode sets the willing
bit for DCBX client TLVs to false. Manually configured ports never internally
propagate or accept internal or external configuration from other ports.
Manually configured ports may notify the operator of incompatible
configurations if client configuration exchange over DCBX is enabled.
Manually configured ports are always operationally enabled for DCBX clients,
regardless of whether DCBX is enabled.
Auto-Upstream
Advertises a configuration, but is also willing to accept a configuration from
the link-partner and propagate it internally to the auto-downstream ports as
well as receive configuration propagated internally by other auto-upstream
ports. Specifically, the willing parameter is enabled on the port and the
recommendation TLV is sent to the peer and processed if received locally. The
first auto-upstream port to successfully accept a compatible configuration
becomes the configuration source. The configuration source propagates its
configuration to other auto-upstream and auto-downstream ports. Only the
configuration source may propagate configuration to other ports internally.
Auto-upstream ports that receive internally propagated information ignore
their local configuration and utilize the internally propagated information.
Peer configurations received on auto-upstream ports other than the
configuration source result in one of two possibilities.
1
If the configuration is compatible with the configuration source, then the
DCBX client becomes operationally active on the upstream port.
2 If the configuration is not compatible with the configuration source, then
a message is logged indicating an incompatible configuration, an error
counter is incremented, and the DCBX client is operationally disabled on
2CSPC4.XModular-SWUM201.book Page 843 Monday, October 3, 2011 2:21 PM