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70 IBM® xSeries 220 User’s Reference
Teaming Mode: Your Ethernet controller provides options, called teaming options.
These options increase throughput and fault tolerance when running with Windows
NT 4.0 or NetWare 4.1x or later.
• Adapter fault tolerance (AFT) provides automatic redundancy for your adapter.
If the primary adapter fails, the secondary adapter takes over. Adapter fault
tolerance supports from two to four adapters per team.
• Adaptive load balancing (ALB) enables you to balance the transmission data
flow among two to four adapters. ALB also includes the AFT option. You can use
ALB with any 100BASE-TX switch.
• Cisco Fast EtherChannel (FEC) creates a team of two to four adapters to
increase transmission and reception thoughput. FEC also includes the AFT
option. You can use FEC only with a switch that has FEC capability.
Teaming requires you to install at least one additional Ethernet adapter. For additional
information about the teaming modes, refer to the documentation that comes with
these additional adapters.
Priority Packet Mode: Priority Packet is a traffic-prioritization utility that you can
use to set up filters to process high-priority traffic before normal traffic. You can send
information from critical nodes or applications with an indicated priority. Because
you set this priority at the host or entry point of the network, the network devices can
base forwarding decisions on priority information that is defined in the packet.
Priority Packet information is available on the IBM Networking Web site at
http://www.ibm.com/networking/support
Priority Packet prioritizes traffic based on priority filters. These are parameters that
you assign to outgoing (transmit) packets. Using the Priority Filter Wizard, you can
set up predefined or custom priority filters based on a node (MAC) address, Ethernet
type, or by various properties of the protocol and port. Priority Packet provides two
different methods for prioritizing traffic: IEEE 802.1p tagging and High Priority
Queue.
IEEE 802.1p is a new IEEE standard for tagging, or adding additional bytes of
information to packets with different priority levels. Packets are tagged with 4
additional bytes, which increase the packet size and indicate a priority level. When
you send these packets out on the network, the higher priority packets are transferred
first. Priority packet tagging (also known as Traffic Class Expediting) enables the
adapter to work with other elements of the network (such as switches and routers) to
deliver priority packets first. You can assign specific priority levels from 0 (low) to 7
(high).
You can assign values to packets based on their priority when you use the IEEE 802.1p
standard for packet tagging. This method requires a network infrastructure that
supports packet tagging. The routing devices that receive and transfer these packets
on your network must support 802.1p for tagging to be effective.
After you set up the priority filter in Priority Packet, you must start IBMSet and select
802.1p/802.1Q Tagging on the Advanced tab.
Note: IEEE 802.1p tagging increases the size of the packets that it tags. Some hubs
and switches will not recognize the larger packets and will drop them. Check
your hub or switch documentation to see if they support 802.1p. (You can
configure the switch to strip the tags from the packets and send it on to the
next destination as normal traffic.) If these devices do not support 802.1p or if
you are not sure, use High Priority Queue (HPQ) to prioritize network traffic.