Specifications

ExtremeWare XOS 11.0 Concepts Guide 343
IP Internet Protocol. The communications protocol underlying the
Internet, IP allows large, geographically diverse networks of
computers to communicate with each other quickly and economically
over a variety of physical links; it is part of the TCP/IP suite of
protocols. IP is the Layer 3, or network layer, protocol that contains
addressing and control information that allows packets to be routed.
IP is the most widely used networking protocol; it supports the idea of
unique addresses for each computer on the network. IP is a
connectionless, best-effort protocol; TCP reassembles the data after
transmission. IP specifies the format and addressing scheme for each
packet.
IP address IP address is a 32-bit number that identifies each unique sender or
receiver of information that is sent in packets; it is written as four
octets separated by periods (dotted-decimal format). An IP address
has two parts: the identifier of a particular network and an identifier
of the particular device (which can be a server or a workstation)
within that network. You may add an optional subnetwork identifier.
Only the network part of the address is looked at between the routers
that move packets from one point to another along the network.
Although you can have a static IP address, many IP addresses are
assigned dynamically from a pool. Many corporate networks and
online services economize on the number of IP addresses they use by
sharing a pool of IP addresses among a large number of users. (The
format of the IP address is slightly changed in IPv6.)
IR Internal router. In OSPF, IR is an internal router that has all interfaces
within the same area.
IRDP Internet Router Discovery Protocol. Used with IP, IRDP enables a host
to determine the address of a router that it can use as a default
gateway. In Extreme Networks implementation, IP multinetting
requires a few changes for the IRDP.
J
jumbo frames These are Ethernet frames that are larger that 1522 bytes (including the
4 bytes in the CRC). The jumbo frame size is configurable on Extreme
Networks devices; the range is from 1523 to 9216 bytes.
L
link type In OSPF, there are four link types that you can configure: auto,
broadcast, point-to-point, and passive.
load sharing Load sharing, also known as trunking or link aggregation, conforms to
IEEE 802.3ad. This feature is the grouping of multiple network links
into one logical high-bandwidth link. For example, by grouping four
100 Mbps of full-duplex bandwidth into one logical link, you can crete
up to 800 Mbps of bandwidth. Thus, you increase bandwidth and
availability by using a group of ports to carry traffic in parallel
between switches.
I (continued)