Instruction manual

MULTILINK MC-E10 & MC-E100 CONVERTER SWITCH
MULTILINK ML2400 ETHERNET COMMUNICATIONS SWITCH – INSTRUCTION MANUAL 21
5. Operation
5.1 Dual-Speed Functionality, and Switching
Multilink MC-E10 & Multilink MC-E100 Converters provide four switched ports (three ports in the
front and one on the rear). The architecture supports a dual speed switching environment, with
auto-negotiation capability.
The switched RJ-45 ports are full-duplex and auto-sensing for speed. (See section 2.2).
When the connected device is 10 Mbps, the Multilink MC-E10s obeys all the rules of 10
Mbps Ethernet configurations. The 10 Mbps users share a 10 Mbps traffic domain, and can
“communicate with” 100Mbps users as well as 100Mbps domain. Similarly, the 100Mbps
traffic obeys the rules of 100Mbps Ethernet, and can communicate with 10 Mb domain
too.
Multilink MC-E10 & Multilink MC-E100 Series units are plug-and-play devices. There is no
software configuring to be done at installation or for maintenance. The only hardware
configuration settings is user options for port #2, to configure at FF/AN and can be done
through a manual switch accessed from the front side. The internal functions of both are
described below.
Switching, Filtering and Forwarding
Each time a packet arrives on one of the switched ports, the decision is taken to either filter
or to forward the packet. Packets whose source and destination addresses on the same
port segment will be filtered, constraining them to one port and relieving the rest of the
network from processing them. A packet whose destination address is on another port
segment will be forwarded to the appropriate port, and will not be sent to the other ports
where it is not needed. Packets needed for maintaining the operation of the network (such
as occasional multi-cast packets) are forwarded to all ports. The Multilink MC-E10 &
Multilink MC-E100 Converters operate in the store-and-forward switching mode, which
eliminates bad packets and enables peak performance to be achieved when there is
heavy traffic on the network.
Switching, Address Learning
The Multilink MC-E10 & Multilink MC-E100 Series units have address table capacity of 2K
node addresses, and are suitable for use in large networks. They are self-learning, so that
as nodes are added or removed or moved from one segment to another, the Multilink MC-
E10 & Multilink MC-E100 Series automatically keeps up with node locations.
An address-aging algorithm causes least-used addresses to fall out in favor of new
frequently-used addresses. To reset the address buffer, cycle power down-and-up.
5.2 Auto-cross (MDIX), Auto-negotiation and Speed-sensing
All the four RJ-45 ports independently support auto-cross (MDIX) in auto-negotiation mode
for speed in 10BASE-T and 100BASE-TX modes. The MDIX does the auto-cross only under
the Auto-negotiation mode, and will not take effect if the port is at fixed mode, (port #2 can
be fixed to Full duplex). Operation is according to the IEEE 802.3u standard.