Ethernet: network topology

Posted by aix on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by aix
Published on 2010-12-21T15:21:51Z Indexed on 2010/12/21 15:55 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 420

Filed under:

ethernet

|

switches

|

protocols

|

network-protocols

|

topology

Consider a standard GigE network switch. In order to do the switching, presumably it needs to maintain a map of MAC addresses of all things that exist on the network to its (switch's) port numbers.

How does it maintain such a map?
What are the protocols involved?
If I change the topology of one part of the network, does the entire network get notified or do things get discovered "lazily" (i.e. on first need)?

© Server Fault or respective owner

Related posts about ethernet

check if my ethernet controller supports gigabit Ethernet

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
is there a command that i can issue in ubuntu to see explicitly if my ethernet controller supports gigabit ethernet? >>> More
MySQL performance - 100Mb ethernet vs 1Gb ethernet

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi All I've just started a new job and noticed that the analysts computers are connected to the network at 100Mbps. The ODBC queries we run against the MySQL server can easily return 500MB+ and it seems at times when the servers are under high load the DBAs kill low priority jobs as they are taking… >>> More
MySQL query performance - 100Mb ethernet vs 1Gb ethernet

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi All I've just started a new job and noticed that the analysts computers are connected to the network at 100Mbps. The queries we run against the MySQL server can easily be 500MB+ and it seems at times when the servers are under high load the DBAs kill low priority jobs as they are taking too long… >>> More
Bridging with aliased Ethernet card for Virtualizing with single Ethernet card

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
We are having a server with good CPU and RAM,so we are planning to do XEN virtualization on ubuntu 12.04 server to handle high traffic. The plan is to keep the host machine only to manage VMs(no NAT ing). A New public IP will be assigned to that VM,For that i think we need a Bridge to external network(Since… >>> More
broadcom 5722 NIC not installed on Ubuntu Server, although driver present

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Hello, I just installed Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS, running kernel 2.6.32-24-server, on a brand new Dell T110 server, supposedly fully compatible with Ubuntu Server. I have two NICs: one ONBOARD, the other additional on PCI. both of them are Broadcom netXtreme 5572. on the first boot of the system… >>> More

Related posts about switches

Hubs/switches taking out switches?

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Here's the issue...we have a network with a lot of Cisco switches. Someone plugged in a hub on the network, and then we started seeing "weird" behavior; errors in communication between clients and servers, or network timeouts, dropping network connections, etc. It seemed that somehow that hub (or… >>> More
SNMP based network discovery (switches), device (ports on switches) power management

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
In a enterprise network, what would be the right way to generate a list of switches (SNMP managed) Is it reasonable to ask the organization to supply a list such as this: Switch name IP Address of switch Location SNMP community strings Or are there standard ways to run discovery scans -… >>> More
HP Upgrades SAN Storage, OEMs QLogic Fibre Channel Switches

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
HP unveils new offerings for iSCSI and Fibre Channel storage networking environments. >>> More
HP ProCurve GVRP Setup

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I'm trying to setup GVRP on my 4 ProCurve switches. Currently I have a Layer 3 3500yl-24G (J8692A) which is connected to 3 Layer 2 2510G-48 (J9280A). I have three trunk ports setup on the 3500 connected to the 3 switches and currently everything seems to be working, the devices are talking to eachother… >>> More
Linksys/Cisco Small Business SRW-Series (ie SRW248G4) - Overcoming the Limitations

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
We just purchased a Cisco/Linksys SRW 248G4 switch to try it out. We have always had unmanaged switches before, and this is our first "somewhat managed" switch. So far the major limitations are: Only Internet Explorer 6 (manual says IE 5.5!) works for the web interface SSH exists but is not practically… >>> More