Product category:
Hardware
News Release from: Ethernet Direct | Subject: SNMP Management In Industrial Ethernet Switch
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 29 January 2007
SNMP Management In Industrial Ethernet
Switch
Ethernet Direct shares the true facts about SNMP Management In industrial Ethernet Switch.
Ethernet Direct Corporation, a professional and primary provider of Industrial Networking and communication solutions, shares the true facts about SNMP management in Industrial Ethernet switch with its users Managed switches should be a major consideration if the health of the network is important
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 23 Aug 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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A managed switch supports SNMP v1, v2, or v3, and it allows communication with network management packages.
This requires greater intelligence at the switch, and there is a wide variation in the performance of SNMP in industrial switches.
Ethernet Direct shares the true facts about SNMP Management in Industrial Ethernet Switch.
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IGMP Snooping.
With Unicast traffic, the switch learns the MAC address by looking into the source address field of every frame.
With Multicast packets, the switch must deal with a multicast MAC header, which may or not appear in its Bridging Table.
As a result, multicast packets are copied and transmitted ('flooded') to every port of the switch.
During 'Multicast Floods', devices are unable to use the network, preventing control data from being sent.
The effect of 'Multicast Floods' is particularly serious with full duplex links, because the bandwidth used is proportional to the number of attached nodes - each of which invites a multicast packet.
IGMP Snooping prevents a flood of packets from 'flooding' a network segment where a node is not interested in receiving the packets.
IGMP is an integral part of IP and is used by Layer 3 switches to report their multicast status to nearby routers.
Because a router must look into the MAC header and 'snoop' into the IP header before handling the packet, this capability is called 'IGMP SNOOPING'.
The multicast packet is then directed only to those nodes listed in the router's table of learned multicast addresses said to be interested in receiving the traffic.
* ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED for I/O over Ethernet.
* Controls Multicasting by PLCs.
* Enables the IGMP Querier in networks' Managed switches.
* A multicasting PLC can reduce the performance of switches to that of Hubs!.
* Network bandwidth is severely compromised by a PLC that is multicasting.
VLAN ( Virtual Local Area Network ).
A Virtual LAN is a way that allows switches to create a single Collision Domain logically even though the nodes are on separate network segments physically.
The benefit is that instead of physically installing hardware to segment a network, VLANs can do it through software.
VLAN configuration can be based on port ID, MAC or IP addresses.
The Port based VLAN standard is IEEE 802.1q.
Each switch in the VLAN must be able to implement the port based VLAN policy.
Ethernet Direct switches support IEEE 802.1q port based VLANS.
RMON ( Remote Monitoring Protocol ).
RMON is an alternative to SNMP that transfers the monitoring responsibility to the managed switch, rather than to the Network Monitoring Software station.
The switch can transmit data at convenient times and send alarms to the station without waiting to be polled.
MIB ( Management Information Base ).
MIBs are a database maintained by the SNMP package that logs the device's condition and the traffic through the device.
The IETF has defined MIBs for ethernet switches.
MIBs are critical to interoperability.
The NMS talks to the device through SNMP, but pulls information from the switch's MIBs.
A common SNMP and MIB structure make it possible to operate different vendors' switches on the same network because the NMS can work with a common interface.
Managed Ethernet Direct switches incorporate SNMP V1/V2c agents and MIB-II objects.
Managed Ethernet Direct switches interoperate with all NMS based software that can read MIB data directly - such as Network Vision's IntraVUE.
Ring Redundancy.
The use of a ring for redundancy or failure recovery is common among suppliers.
Since there is no IEEE or IETF standard, each supplier has a slightly different scheme and thus, proprietary method.
For this reason, many customers are not selecting ring redundancy - it would lock them into a particular supplier.
Those customers choose Rapid Spanning Tree - it is another redundancy scheme and is an IEEE standard that can be used for most applications.
Ring Redundancy must be configured in managed switches using, according to the vendor, pre-defined ports, and one switch must be defined as the 'ring manager'.
Ethernet Direct switches allow any ports to be used as 'ring' ports.
Rapid Spanning Tree Redundancy ( RSTP ).
This redundancy scheme allows a back-up path to be put in a standby mode and activated upon failure of the primary path.
The network topology CAN be in a ring - similar to Ring Redundancy.
Different switch vendors that support RSTP in their managed switches can be used in the same network segments - RSTP is an IEEE standard.
Users must configure RSTP in managed switches - defining various aspects of the configuration.
Is it difficult to learn how to set up managed switches?.
It depends on how the switch needs to be configured - most parameters are very easy, such as:.
* Setting the IP address and giving the switch a name, location and description ( all optional ).
* Enabling the IGMP Snooping.
* Port Control - turning off unused ports.
* Security - entering the IP addresses ( laptops, desktops ) allowed for management changes.
* Ring Redundancy - entering the ports used for the ring.
Ethernet Direct can help you with switch management - our Support Library contains many presentations and videos that explain and demonstrate how to set up the parameters for your application.
You can always call us for help.
Always purchase switches that are true SNMP managed.
They will operate with any others that are SNMP managed.
Ethernet Direct makes fully managed, true SNMP switches affordable for all applications.
To learn more, please visit the website.
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