3Com 1000 Switch User Manual


 
1-6 C
HAPTER
1: G
ETTING
S
TARTED
Redundant paths are enabled if the main traffic
paths fail.
For more information about STP, refer to
Spanning
Tree Protocol” on page 5-12.
PACE
The Switch 1000 supports PACE (Priority Access
Control Enabled) technology, which allows multime-
dia traffic to be carried over standard Ethernet and
Fast Ethernet LANs. PACE provides two features:
Implicit Class of Service
— When multimedia traf-
fic is transmitted, it is given a higher priority
than other data and is therefore forwarded ahead
of other data when it arrives at the Switch. The
Implicit Class of Service feature minimizes latency
through the Switch and protects the quality of
multimedia traffic.
Interactive Access
— When two-way multimedia
traffic passes over an Ethernet network, interfer-
ence can occur because access to the bandwidth
is unequally allocated to traffic in one direction.
The Interactive Access feature allocates the avail-
able bandwidth equally in both directions, there-
fore increasing the quality of the traffic.
For more information about setting up PACE on the
Switch, refer to
Setting Up the Switch Unit” and
Setting Up the Switch Ports” in Chapter 4.
Switch 1000 on Your Network
Server Connections
When connecting servers to the Switch 1000, use
the following rules to ensure that the Switch is
operating at maximum efficiency:
Ideally, any local server should be connected to
the Switch using a 100Mbps port.
If that is not possible, connect the local server to
a dedicated 10Mbps port.
If that is not possible and the local server is con-
nected to a repeated segment where the traffic is
mainly local to that segment, disable Intelligent
Flow Management (IFM) on the port to which the
repeater is connected.
If your network is running a peer-to-peer protocol
(for example, Windows 95) and you have multiple
endstations connected to the Switch via a repeater,
we recommend that you disable IFM on the port to
which the repeater is connected.
Network Configuration Examples
The following illustrations show some examples of
how the Switch can be placed on your network.
Examples of how the Switch 1000 can be used in a
VLAN-based network are given in Chapter 5
.