Data Sheet

Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) • The IEEE 802.1AB defined standard, Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP), allows the switch to advertise
major capabilities and physical descriptions. This information can help you identify system topology and
detect bad configurations on the LAN.
Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) for Media
Endpoint Device
• The Link Layer Discovery Protocol for Media Endpoint Devices (LLDP-MED) provides an extension to the
LLDP standard for network configuration and policy, device location, Power over Ethernet management,
and inventory management.
DHCP Layer 2 Relay • This feature permits Layer 3 Relay agent functionality in Layer 2 switched networks. The switch supports L2
DHCP relay configuration on individual ports, Port-channels and VLANs.
MAC Multicast Support • Multicast service is a limited broadcast service that allows one-to-many and many-to-many connections.
In Layer 2 multicast services, a single frame addressed to a specific multicast address is received, and
copies of the frame to be transmitted on each relevant port are created.
IGMP Snooping • Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) Snooping is a feature that allows a switch to forward
multicast trac intelligently on the switch. Multicast IP trac is trac that is destined to a host group.
Host groups are identified by class D IP addresses, which range from 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255.
Based on the IGMP query and report messages, the switch forwards trac only to the ports that request
the multicast trac. This prevents the switch from broadcasting the trac to all ports and possibly
aecting network performance.
IGMP Plus Enhancement The IGMP Plus enhanced implementation for automatic multicast across a M4500 / M4300 L2 network
(Spine and Leaf topologies) removes the need for L3 PIM routing:
• IGMP Plus is pre-configured on default VLAN 1 out of the box in all M4500 and M4300 models
(M4300: starting 12.0.8.x release).
• IGMP Plus can be configured on another VLAN for automatic IGMP across switches on that VLAN (uplinks
can make part of that VLAN in trunk mode).
• IGMP Plus allows AV-over-IP devices (TX/Encoders and RX/Decoders) to be connected across multiple
M4500 and M4300 switches in a star topology.
• New show igmpsnooping group command in CLI displays the Source and Group IP addresses along with
their corresponding MAC addresses that are learnt through IGMP Snooping in a given VLAN on a given
interface.
Source Specific Multicasting (SSM) • This mechanism provides the ability for a host to report interest in receiving a particular multicast stream
only from among a set of specific source addresses, or its interest in receiving a multicast stream from any
source other than a set of specific source addresses.
Control Packet Flooding • This feature enhances the MGMD Snooping functionality to flood multicast packets with DIP=224.0.0.x
to all members of the incoming VLAN irrespective of the configured filtering behavior. This enhancement
depends on the ability of the switch to flood packets with DIP=224.0.0.x irrespective of the entries in the
L2 Multicast Forwarding Tables.
Flooding to mRouter Ports • This feature enhances the MGMD Snooping functionality to flood unregistered multicast streams to all
mRouter ports in the VLAN irrespective of the configured filtering behavior. This enhancement depends on
the ability of the switch to flood packets to specific ports in the incoming VLAN when there are no entries
in the L2 Multicast Forwarding Tables for the specific stream. In platforms that do not have the hardware
capability, incoming multicast streams are always flooded in the ingress VLAN when the switch supports an
“L2 multicast miss.”
IGMP Snooping Querier • When Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) and IGMP are enabled in a network with IP multicast routing,
the IP multicast router acts as the IGMP querier. However, if it is desirable to keep the multicast network
Layer 2 switched only, the IGMP Snooping Querier can perform the query functions of a Layer 3 multicast
router.
Management and Control Plane ACLs • This feature provides hardware-based filtering of trac to the CPU. An optional ‘management’ feature is
available to apply the ACL on the CPU port. Currently, control packets like BPDU are dropped because of
the implicit ‘deny all’ rule added at the end of the list. To overcome this rule, you must add rules that allow
the control packets. Support for user-defined simple rate limiting rule attributes for inbound as well as
outbound trac is also available. This attribute is supported on all QoS capable interfaces - physical, Port-
channel, and control-plane.
100GE-Enabled Managed Switches Data Sheet
M4500 series
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