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Media Converter Switches Installation and User Guide
23
per port. When the port buffer fills up, dropped packets result.) This dynamic buffer
allocation provides the capability for the maximum resources of the LBH100A and
LBH110A Series unit to be applied to all traffic loads, even when the traffic activity is
unbalanced across the ports. Since the traffic on an operating network is constantly varying
in packet density per port and in aggregate density, the LBH100A and LBH110A Series
Media Converter Switches are constantly adapting internally to provide maximum network
performance with the least dropped packets.
When the Converter Switch detects that its free buffer queue space is low, the
Switch sends industry standard (full-duplex only) PAUSE packets out to the devices
sending packets to cause “flow control”. This tells the sending devices to temporarily stop
sending traffic, which allows a traffic catch-up to occur without dropping packets. Then,
normal packet buffering and processing resumes. This flow-control sequence occurs in a
small fraction of a second and is transparent to an observer. See Section 4.6 for details.
Another feature implemented in LBH100A and LBH110A Series Media
Converter Switches is a collision-based flow-control mechanism (when operating at half-
duplex only). When the Switch detects that its free buffer queue space is low, the Switch
prevents more frames from entering by forcing a collision signal on all receiving half-
duplex ports in order to stop incoming traffic.