User guide

E
XTREME
W
ARE
S
OFTWARE
U
SER
G
UIDE
1-3
S
UMMARY OF
F
EATURES
V
IRTUAL
LAN
S
(VLAN
S
)
ExtremeWare has a VLAN feature that enables you to construct your broadcast domains
without being restricted by physical connections. A VLAN is a group of location- and
topology-independent devices that communicate as if they were on the same physical
local area network (LAN).
Implementing VLANs on your network has the following three advantages:
• They help to control broadcast traffic. If a device in VLAN Marketing transmits a
broadcast frame, only VLAN Marketing devices receive the frame.
• They provide extra security. Devices in VLAN Marketing can only communicate with
devices on VLAN Sales using routing services.
• They ease the change and movement of devices on networks.
For more information on VLANs, refer to Chapter 6.
S
PANNING
T
REE
P
ROTOCOL
The switch supports the IEEE 802.1D Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), which is a
bridge-based mechanism for providing fault tolerance on networks. STP enables you to
implement parallel paths for network traffic, and ensure the following:
• Redundant paths are disabled when the main paths are operational.
• Redundant paths are enabled if the main traffic paths fail.
A single spanning tree can span multiple VLANs.
For more information on STP, refer to Chapter 8.
Q
UALITY OF
S
ERVICE
ExtremeWare has Policy-Based Quality of Service (QoS) features that enable you to
specify service levels for different traffic groups. By default, all traffic is assigned the
“normal” QoS policy profile. If needed, you can create other QoS policies and apply
them to different traffic types so that they have different guaranteed minimum
bandwidth, maximum bandwidth, and priority.