Ethernet Switches

Glossary

address

A means of uniquely identifying a device on a network.

broadcast address

The multicast destination address of all ones, defined as the group of all stations on a network. The standard requires that every station must receive and act upon every Ethernet frame whose destination address is all ones.

broadcast domain

The set of all nodes connected in a network that will receive each other’s broadcast frames. All Ethernet segments connected with a Layer 2 bridge are in the same broadcast domain. Virtual LANs (VLANs) can be used to establish multiple broadcast domains in an Ethernet system based on switches.

CoS

Class of Service. The IEEE 802.1Q standard provides an extra field in the Ethernet frame to hold both a VLAN identifier and Class of Service tags. The Class of Service tag values are defined in the IEEE 802.1p standard.

Data Link Layer

Layer 2 of the OSI reference model. This layer takes data from the network layer and passes it on to the physical layer. The data link layer is responsible for transmitting and receiving Ethernet frames.

forwarding

The process of moving frames from one port to another in a switch.

forwarding rate

The maximum number of frames that can be forwarded by a switch, typically measured in frames per second.

frame

The fundamental unit of transmission at the data link layer.

full-duplex media

A signal transmission path that can support simultaneous data transmission and reception.

full-duplex mode

A communications method ...